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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap Copyriglit No 

Shelf.-Al .. . 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 




Thomas Carlyle. 



42861 



l_i bleary of Cona>'*e«(e 

"^WO COh€S Beceueo 

SEP 4 1900 

C»py"g*t antry 

SECOND COPY. 

OelivenMi to 

ORDER DIVISION, 
SEP 5 1900 



1^0 c 



Copyright, 1900, by W. B. Conkey Company. 



74143 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK I. 

CHAPTER. ^^G^- 

I. Preliminary 5 

II. Editorial Difficulties 12 

III. Reminiscences 18 

IV. Characteristics 34 

V. The World in Clothes • 42 

VI. Aprons 5i 

VII. Miscellaneous-Historical 55 

VIII. The World out of Clothes 61 

IX. Adamitism ^9 

X. Pure Reason 76 

XI. Prospective • ^ 



BOOK II. 

I. Genesis 9^ 

II. Idyllic 107 

III. Pedagogy "9 

IV. Getting Under Way i4i 

V. Romance ^57 

VI. Sorrows of Teufelsdrockh i74 

VII. The Everlasting No iS7 

VIII, Center of Indifference 198 

IX. The Everlasting Yea 213 

X. Pause 229 

8 



4 CONTENTS. 
BOOK III. 

CHAPTER. PAGE. 

I. Incident in Modern History. 239 

II. Church-Clothes 247 

III. Symbols 252 

IV. Helotage: 262 

V. The Phcenix , 268 

VI. Old Clothes 276 

VII, Organic Filaments 282 

VIII. Natural Supernaturalism 294 

IX. Circumspective 309 

X. The Dandiacal Body 315 

XI. Tailors 333 

XII. Farewell 338 



SARTOR RESARTUS 



BOOK FIRST. 



CHAPTER I. 

PRELIMINARY. 

Considering our present advanced state of 
culture, and how the Torch of Science has now 
been brandished and borne about, with more 
or less effect, for five thousand years and up- 
ward; how in these times especially, not only 
the Torch still burns, and perhaps more 
fiercely than ever, but innumerable Rushlights, 
and Sulphur-matches kindled thereat, are also 
glancing in every direction, so that not the 
smallest cranny or doghole in Nature or Art 
can remain unillumanated, — it might strike 
the reflective mind with some surprise that 
hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental 
character, whether in the way of Philosophy or 
History, has been written on the subject of 
Clothes. 

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as per- 
fect: Lagrange, it is well known, has proved 
that the Planetary System, on this scheme, will 
5 



6 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

endure forever ; Laplace, still more cunningly, 
even guesses that it could not have been made 
on any other scheme. Whereby, at least, our 
nautical Logbooks can be better kept; and 
water-transport of all kinds has grown more 
commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we 
know enough: what with the labors of our 
Werners and Huttons, what with the ardent 
genius of their disciples, it has come about 
that now, to many a Royal Society, the Crea- 
tion of a World is little more mysterious than 
the cooking of a dumpling ; concerning which 
last, indeed, there have been minds to whom 
the question. How the apples were got in, 
presented difficulties. Why mention our dis- 
quisitions on the Social Contract, on the Stan- 
dard of Taste, on the Migrations of the Her- 
ring? Then, have we not a Doctrine of Rent, 
a Theory of Value ; Philosophies of Language, 
of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, of In- 
toxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and en- 
vironment have been laid open and elucidated; 
scarcely a fragment or fiber of his Soul, Body, 
and Possessions, but has been probed, dissected, 
distilled, desiccated, and scientifically decom- 
posed: our spiritual Faculties, of which it ap- 
pears there are not a few, have their Stewarts, 
Cousins, Royer Collards : every cellular, vascu- 
lar, muscular Tissue glories in its Lawrences, 
Majendies, Bichats. 

How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind 
repeat, that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the 
only real Tissue, should have been quite over- 
looked by Science, — the vestural Tissue, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 7 

namely, of woolen or other cloth; which Man's 
Soul wears as its outmost wrappage and over- 
all; wherein his whole other Tissues are in- 
cluded and screened, his whole Faculties work, 
his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being? 
For if, now and then, some straggling broken- 
winged thinker has cast an owl's-glance into 
this obscure region, the most have soared over 
it altogether heedless ; regarding Clothes as a 
property, not an accident, as quite natural and 
spontaneous, like the leaves of trees, like the 
plumage of birds. In all speculations they 
have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal ; 
whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal ; and 
only in certain circumstances, by purpose and 
device, masks himself in Clothes. Shake- 
speare says, we are creatures that look before 
and after: the more surprising that we do not 
look round a little, and see what is passing 
under our very eyes. 

But here, as in so many other cases, Ger- 
many, learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking 
Germany comes to our aid. It is, after all, a 
blessing that, in these revolutionary times, 
there should be one country where abstract 
Thought can still take shelter; that while the 
din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and 
Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen 
every French and every English ear, the Ger- 
man can stand peaceful on his scientific watch- 
tower; and, to the raging, struggling multi- 
tude here and elsewhere, solemnly, from hour 
to hour, with preparatory blast of cowhorn, 
emit his Horet ihr Herren und lassefs Euch sagen; 



8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

in other words, tell the Universe, which so 
often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. 
Not unfrequently the Germans have been 
blamed for an unprofitable diligence; as if 
they struck into devious courses, where noth- 
ing was to be had but the toil of a rough jour- 
ney; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of finance 
and that political slaughter of fat oxen whereby 
a man himself grows fat, they were apt to run 
goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and 
crowberries, and be swallowed up at last in re- 
mote peat-bogs. Of that unwise science, 
which, as our Humorist expresses it, — 

"By geometric scale 
Doth take the size of pots of ale ;" 

Still more, of that altogether misdirected indus- 
try, which is seen vigorously thrashing mere 
straw, there can nothing defensive be said. 
In so far as the Germans are chargeable with 
such, let them take the consequence. Never- 
theless, be it remarked, that even a Russian 
steppe has tumuli and gold ornaments; also 
many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound 
from the distance, will unfold itself, when vis- 
ited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would 
Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turn- 
pikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, 
for the mind of man? It is written, "Many 
shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be 
increased." Surely, the plain rule is, Let each 
considerate person have his way, and see what 
it will lead to. For not this man and that man, 
but all men make up mankind, and their 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 9 

united tasks the task of mankind. How often 
have we seen some such adventurous, and per- 
haps much-censured wanderer light on some 
outlying, neglected, yet vitally momentous 
province; the hidden treasures of which he 
first discovered, and kept proclaiming till the 
general eye and effort were directed thither, 
and the conquest was completed ; — thereby, in 
these his seemingly so aimless rambles, plant- 
ing new standards, founding new habitable 
colonies, in the immeasurable circumambient 
realm of Nothingness and Night ! Wise man 
was he who counseled that Speculation should 
have free course, and look fearlessly toward 
all the thirty- two points of the compass, whith- 
ersoever and howsoever it listed. 

Perhaps it is proof of the stunted condition 
in which pure Science, especially pure moral 
Science, languishes among us English; and 
how our mercantile greatness, and invaluable 
Constitution, impressing a political or other 
immediately practical tendency on all English 
culture and endeavor, cramps the free flight of 
Thought, — that this, not Philosophy of Clothes, 
but recognition even that we have no such 
Philosophy, stands here for the first time pub- 
lished in our language. What English intel- 
lect could have chosen such a topic, or by 
chance stumbled on it? But for that same un- 
shackled, and even sequestered condition of the 
German Learned, which permits and induces 
them to fish in all manner of waters, with all 
manner of nets, it seems probable enough, this 

2 Sartor Besartas 



10 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

abstrtise Inquiry might, in spite of the results 
it leads to, have continued dormant for indefi- 
nite periods. The Editor of these sheets, 
though otherwise boasting himself a man of 
confirmed speculative habits, and perhaps dis- 
cursive enough, is free to confess, that never, 
till these last months, did the above very plain 
considerations, on our total want of a Philos- 
ophy of Clothes, occur to him; and then, by 
quite foreign suggestion. By the arrival, 
namely, of a new Book from Professor Teufels- 
drockh of Weissnichtwo ; treating expressly of 
this subject, and in a style which, whether un- 
derstood or not, could not even by the blindest 
be overlooked. In the present Editor's way of 
thought, this remarkable Treatise, with its 
Doctrines, whether as judicially acceded to, 
or judicially denied, has not remained without 
effect. 

^' Die Kleider, ihr Werden und Wirken (Clothes, 
their Origin and Influence) : von Diog. Teu- 
fehdrockh, J. U. D. , etc. Stillschweigen uiid Cognie. 
Weissnichtwo^ 1 8 3 1 . 

"Here," says the Weissnichtwo' sche Afizeiger, 
*' comes a Volume of that extensive, close- 
printed, close-meditated sort, which, be it 
spoken with pride, is seen only in Germany, 
perhaps only in Weissnichtwo. Issuing from 
the hitherto irreproachable Firm of Stillschwei- 
gen and Company, with every external fur- 
therance, it is of such internal qualit}^ as to set 
Neglect at defiance." . .. . "A work," con- 
cludes the well-nigh enthusiastic Reviev/er, 
*' interesting alike to the antiquary, the histo- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 11 

riari, and the philosophic thinker; a master- 
piece of boldness, lynx-eyed acuteness, and 
rugged independent Germanism and Philan- 
thropy {derber Kerndeutschheit und Me?ische?diebe) ; 
which will not, assuredly, pass current with- 
out opposition in high places; but must and 
will exalt the almost new name of Teufels- 
drockh to the first ranks of Philosophy, in our 
German Temple of Honor. " 

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished 
Professor, in this the first blaze of his fame, 
which, however, does not dazzle him, sends 
hither a Presentation-copy of his Book; with 
compliments and encomiums which modesty 
forbids the present Editor to rehearse; yet 
without indicated wish or hope of any kind, 
except what may be implied in the concluding 
phrase: Mochte es (this remarkable Treatise) 
audi im Brittischen Boden gedeihen! 



12 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER II. 

EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 

If for a speculative man, "whose seedfield, " 
in the sublime words of the Poet, "is Time," 
no conquest is important but that of new ideas, 
then might the arrival of Professor Teufels- 
drockh's Book be marked with chalk in the 
Editor's calendar. It is, indeed, an "extens- 
ive Volume," of boundless, almost formless 
contents, a very vSea of Thought; neither calm 
nor clear if you will ; yet wherein the toughest 
pearl-diver may dive to his utmost depth, and 
return not only with sea-wreck, but with true 
orients. 

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the 
first deliberate inspection, it became apparent 
that here a quite new Branch of Philosophy, 
leading to as yet undescried ulterior results, 
was disclosed; farther, what seemed scarcely 
less interesting, a quite new human Individu- 
ality, an almost unexampled personal charac- 
ter, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh 
the Discloser. Of both which novelties, as far 
as might be possible, we resolved to master 
the significance. But as man is emphatically 
a proselytizing creature, no sooner was such 
mastery even fairly attempted, than the new 
question arose : How might this acquired good 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 13 

be imparted to others, perhaps in equal need 
thereof: how could the Philosophy of Clothes, 
and the Author of such Philosophy, be brought 
home, in any measure, to the business and bos- 
oms of our own English Nation? For if new- 
got gold is said to burn the pockets till it be 
cast forth into circulation, much more may new 
truth. 

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The 
first thought naturally was to publish Article 
after Article on this remarkable Volume, in 
such widely-circulating Critical Journals as 
the Editor might stand connected with, or by 
money or love procure access to. But, on the 
other hand, was it not clear that such matter 
as must here be revealed, and treated of, 
might endanger the circulation of any journal 
extant? If, indeed, all party-divisions in the 
State could have been abolished, Whig, Tory, 
and Radical, embracing in discrepant union; 
and all the journals of the Nation could have 
been jumbled into one journal, and the Phi- 
losophy of Clothes poured forth in incessant 
torrents therefrom, the attempt had seemed 
possible. But, alas, what vehicle of that sort 
have we, except Eraser's Magazine? A vehicle 
all strewed (figuratively speaking) with the 
maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding dis- 
tractively and destructively, wheresoever the 
mystified passenger stands or sits; nay, in any 
case, understood to be, of late years, a vehicle 
full of overflowing and inexorably shut I Be- 
sides, to state the Philosophy of Clothes with- 
out the Philosopher, the ideas of Teufelsdrockh 



14 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

without something of his personality, was it 
not to insure both of entire misapprehension? 
Now for Biography, had it been otherwise ad- 
missible, there were no adequate documents, 
no hope of obtaining such, but rather, owing to 
circumstances, a special despair. Thus did the 
Editor see himself, for the while, shut out from 
all public utterance of these extraordinary Doc- 
trines, and constrained to revolve them, not 
without disquietude, in the dark depths of his 
own mind. 

So had it lasted for some months; and now 
the Volume on Clothes, read and again read, 
was in several points becoming lucid and lu- 
cent; the personality of its Author more and 
more surprising, but, in spite of all that mem- 
ory and conjecture could do, more and m^ore 
enigmatic; whereby the old disquietude 
seemed fast settling into fixed discontent, — 
when altogether unexpectedly arrives a Letter 
from Herr Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Profes- 
sor's chief friend and associate in Weissnichtwo, 
with whom we had not previously correspond- 
ed. The Hofrath, after much quite extraneous 
matter, began dilating largely on the *' agita- 
tion and attention" which the Philosophy of 
Clothes was exciting in its own German Re- 
public of Letters; on the deep significance and 
tendency of his Friend's Volume; and then, at 
length, with great circumlocution, hinted at 
the practicability of conveying '*some knowl- 
edge of it, and of him, to England, and through 
England to the distant West," a work on Pro- 
fessor Teufelsdrockh "were undoubtedly wel- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 15 

come to the Family, the National, or any other 
of those patriotic Libraiies, at present the 
glory of British Literature;" might work rev- 
olutions in Thought; and so forth; — in conclu- 
sion, intimating not obscurely, that should the 
present Editor feel disposed to undertake a 
Biography of Teufelsdrockh, he, Hofrath Heu- 
schrecke, had it in his power to furnish the 
requisite Documents. 

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood 
long evaporating, but would not crystallize, in- 
stantly when the wire or other fixed substance 
is introduced, crystallization commences, and 
rapidly proceeds till the whole is finished, so 
was it with the Editor's mind and this offer of 
Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void solu- 
tion and discontinuity; like united itself with 
like in definite arrangement; and soon either 
in actual vision and possession, or in fixed rea- 
sonable hope the image of the whole Enter- 
prise had shaped itself, so to speak, into a solid 
mass. Cautiously yet courageously, through 
the two-penny post, application to the famed 
redoubtable Oliver Yorke was now made : an 
interview, interviews with that singular man 
have taken place ; with more of assurance on 
our side, with less of satire (at least of open 
satire) on his, than we anticipated; — for the 
rest, with such issue as is now visible. As to 
those same "patriotic Libraries," the Hofrath's 
counsel could only be viewed with silent amaze- 
ment; but with his offer of Documents we joy- 
fully and almost instantanously closed. Thus, 
too, in the sure expectation of these, we already 



16 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

see our task begun ; and this our Sartor Resar- 
tus, which is properly a "Life and Opinions of 
Herr Teufelsdrockh, " hourly advancing. 

Of our fitness for the Enterprise, to which 
we have such title and vocation, it were per- 
haps uninteresting to say more. Let the Brit- 
ish reader study and enjoy, in simplicity of 
heart, what is here presented him, and with 
whatever metaphysical acumen and talent for 
meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive 
to keep a free, open sense; cleared from the 
mists of prejudice, above all from the paralysis 
of cant ; and directed rather to the Book itself 
than to the Editor of the Book. Who or what 
such Editor may be, must remain conjectural, 
and even insignificant :* it is a voice publishing 
tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes; undoubt- 
edly a Spirit addressing Spirits: whoso hath 
ears, let him hear. 

On one other point the Editor thinks it need- 
ful to give warning; namely that he is ani- 
mated with a true though perhaps a feeble at- 
tachment to the Institutions of our Ancestors; 
and minded to defend these, according to abil- 
ity, at all hazards; nay, it was partly with a 
view to such defense that he engaged in this 
undertaking. To stem, or if that be impossi- 
ble, profitably to divert the current of Innova- 
tion, such a Volume as Teufelsdrockh's, if cun- 
ningly planted now, were no despicable pile, 
or floodgate, in the logical wear. 

*With us even he still communicates in some sort of 
mask, or muffler ; and, we have reason to think, under a 
feigned name !— O. Y. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 17 

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended, that 
any personal connection of ours with Teufels- 
drockh, Heuschrecke, or this Philosophy of 
Clothes, can pervert our judgment, or sway us 
to extenuate or exaggerate. Powerless, we ven- 
ture to promise, are those private Compliments 
themselves. Grateful they may well be; as 
generous illusions of friendship; as fair me- 
mentos of bygone unions, of those nights and 
suppers of the gods, when, lapped in the sym- 
phonies and harmonies of Philosophic Elo- 
quence, though with baser accompaniments, 
the present Editor reveled in that feast of rea- 
son, never since vouchsafed him in so full 
measure ! But what then ? Amicus Plato, magis 
arnica Veritas; Teufelsdrockh is our friend. 
Truth is our divinity. In our historical and 
critical capacity, we hope we are strangers to 
all the world ; have feud or favor with no one, 
— save, indeed, the Devil, with whom, as with 
the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all 
times wage internecine war. This assurance, 
at an epoch, when puffery and quackery have 
reached a height unexampled in the annals of 
mankind, and even English Editors, like Chi- 
nese Shopkeepers, must write on their door- 
lintels, No cheating here, — we thought it good 
to promise. 



18 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER III. 

REMINISCENCES. 

To the author's private circle the appearance 
of this singular Work on Clothes must have 
occasioned little less surprise than it has to the 
rest of the world. For ourselves, at least, few 
things have been more unexpected. Professor 
Teufelsdrockh, at the period of our acquaint- 
ance with him, seemed to lead a quite still 
and self-contained life: a man devoted to the 
higher Philosophies, indeed ; yet more likely, 
if he published at all, to publish a refutation 
of Hegel and Bardili, both of whom, strangely 
enougli, he included under a common ban; 
than to descend, as he has here done, into the 
angry, noisy Forum, with an Argument that 
cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, that 
we can remember, was the Philosophy of 
Clothes once touched upon between us. If 
through the high, silent, meditative Transcen- 
dentalism of our Friend we detected any prac- 
tical tendency whatever, it was at most Politi- 
cal, and toward a certain prospective, and for 
the present quite speculative, Radicalism ; as 
indeed some correspondence, on his part, with 
Herr Oken of Jena was now and then sus- 
pected; though his special contributions to the 
Isis could never be more than surmised at. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 19 

But, at all events, nothing Moral, still less 
anything Didactico-Religious, was looked for 
from him. 

Vf ell do we recollect the last words he spoke 
in our hearing; which indeed, with the Night 
they were uttered in, are to be forever remem- 
bered. Lifting his huge tumbler of Gukguk^"^ 
and for a moment lowering his tobacco-pipe, 
he stood up in full coffee-house (it was Ziir 
Grunen Gans, the largest in Weissnichtwo, 
where all the Virtuosity, and nearly all the 
Intellect of the place assembled of an evening) ; 
and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and 
the look truly of an angel, though whether of 
a v/hite or of a black one might be dubious, 
proposed this toast: Die Sache der Armen in 
Gottes tmd Teufels Nameji (The Cause of the 

Poor, in Heaven's name and 's) ! One full 

shout, breaking the leaden silence; then a gur- 
gle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again 
followed by universal cheering, returned him 
loud acclaim. It was the finale of the night: 
resuming their pipes; in the highest enthusi- 
asm, amid volumes of tobacco-sm^oke ; triumph- 
ant, cloud-capt without and within, the assem- 
bly broke up each to his thoughtful pillow. 
Bleibt dock ein echter Spass-imd-Galgen-vogel^ said 
several ; meaning thereby that, one day, he 
would probably be hanged for his democratic 
sentiments. Wo steckt dock der Schalk? added 
they, looking round; but Teufelsdrockh had 
retired by private alleys, and the Compiler of 
these pages beheld him no more. 

* Gukguk is unhappily only an academical— beer. 



20 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

In such scenes has it been our lot to live 
with this Philosopher, such estimate to form 
of his purposes and powers. And yet, thou 
brave Teufelsdrockh, who could tell what 
lurked in thee? Under those thick locks of 
thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise 
the gravest face we ever in this world saw, 
there dwelt a most busy brain. In thy eyes 
too, deep under their shaggy brows, and look- 
ing out so still and dreamy, have we not no- 
ticed gleams of an ethereal or else a diabolic 
fire, and half-fancied that their stillness was 
but the rest of infinite motion, the sleep of a 
spinning-top? Thy little figure, there as, in 
loose ill-brushed threadbare habiliments, thou 
sattest, and litter and lumber, whole days, to 
"think and smoke tobacco," held in it a 
mighty heart. The secrets of man's Life were 
laid open to thee; thou sawest into the mys- 
tery of the Universe, farther than another; 
thou hadst in petto thy remarkable Volume on 
•Clothes. Nay was there not in that clear 
lo«-ically-founded Transcendentalism of thine ; 
still more, in thy meek, silent, deep-seated 
Sansculottism, combined with a true princely 
Courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudi- 
ments of such speculation? But great men are 
too often unknown, or what is worse, mis- 
known. Already, when we dreamed not of it, 
the warp of thy remarkable Volume lay on the 
loom; and silently, mysterious shuttles were 
putting in the woof! 

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 21 

biographical data, in this case, may be a curi- 
ous question ; the answer of which, however, is 
happily not our concern, but his. To us it 
appeared, after repeated trial, that in Weiss- 
nichtwo, from the archives of memories of the 
best-informed classes, no Biography of Teu- 
f elsdrockh was to be gathered ; not so much as 
a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted 
thither by what is called the course of circum- 
stances; concerning whose parentage, birth- 
place, prospects, or pursuits, curiosity had in- 
deed made inquiries, but satisfied herself with 
the most indistinct replies. For himself, he 
was a man so still and altogether unparticipat- 
ing, that to question him even afar off on such 
particulars was a thing of more the usual deli- 
cacy ; besides, in his sly way, he had ever some 
quaint turn, not without its satirical edge, 
wherewith to divert such intrusions, and deter 
you from the like. Wits spoke of him secretly 
as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, without 
father or mother of any kind; sometimes, with 
reference to his great historic and statistic 
knowledge, and the varied way he had of ex- 
pressing himself like an eye-witness of distant 
transactions and scenes, they called him the 
Ewige Jiide, Everlasting, or as we say, Wander- 
ing Jew. 

To the most, indeed, he had become not so 
much a Man as a Thing ; which Thing doubt- 
less they were accustomed to see, and with 
satisfaction ; but no more thought of account- 
ing for than for the fabrication of their daily 
Allgemeiiie Zeitmig, or the domestic habits of 



22 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the Sun. Both were there and welcome ; the 
world enjoyed what good was in them, and 
thought no more of the matter. The man 
Teufelsdrockh passed and repassed, in his little 
circle, as one of those originals and nonde- 
scripts, more frequent in German Universities 
than elsewhere; of whom, though you see 
them alive, and feel certain enough that they 
must have a History, no History seems to be 
discoverable; or only such as men give of 
mountain rocks and antediluvian ruins: That 
they have been created by unknown agencies, 
are in a state of gradual decay, and for the 
present reflect light and resist pressure ; that 
is, are visible and tangible objects in this phan- 
tasm world, where so much other mystery is. 
It was to be remarked that though, by title 
and diploma, Professor der Allerley-Wissenschaft^ 
or as we should say in English, "Professor of 
Things in General," he had never delivered 
any course ; perhaps never been incited thereto 
by any public furtherance or requisition. To 
all appearance, the enlightened Government 
of Weissnichtwo, in founding their New Uni- 
versity, imagined they had done enough if, 
"in times like ours," as the half-official Pro- 
gram expressed it, "when all things are, rap- 
idly or slowly, resolving themselves into 
Chaos, a Professorship of this kind had been 
established; whereby, as occasion called, the 
task of bodying somewhat forth again from 
such Chaos might be, even slightly, facili- 
tated." That actual Lectures should be held, 
and Public Classes for the "Science of Things 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 23- 

in General," they doubtless considered pre- 
mature; on which ground too they had only 
established the Professorship, nowise endowed 
it; so that Teufelsdr5ckh, ''recommended by 
the highest Names," had been promoted there- 
by to a Name merely. 

Great, among the more enlightened classes, 
was the admiration of this new Professorship: 
how an enlightened Government had seen into 
the Want of the Age {Zeitbedurfniss) ; how at 
length, instead of Denial and Destruction, we 
were to have a science of Affirmation and Re- 
construction; and Germany and Weissnichtvvo 
were where they should be, in the vanguard of 
the world. Considerable also was the wonder 
at the new Professor, dropt opportunely 
enough into the nascent University ; so able to 
lecture, should occasion call; so ready to hold 
his peace for indefinite periods, should an en- 
lightened Government consider that occasion 
did not call. But such admiration and such 
wonder, being followed by no act to keep them 
living, could last only nine days; and, long be- 
fore our visit to that scene, had quite died 
away. The more cunning heads thought it 
was all an expiring clutch at popularity, on 
the part of a Minister, whom domestic em- 
barrassments, court intrigues, old age, and 
dropsy soon afterward finally drove from the 
helm. 

As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his niglitly 
appearances at the Griine Gaiis, Weissnichtwo 
saw little of him, felt little of him. Here, over 
his tumbler of Gukguk, he sat reading Jour- 



24 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nals; sometimes contemplatively looking into 
the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, without other 
visible employment: always, from his mild 
ways, an agreeable phenomenon there; more 
especially when he opened his lips for speech ; 
on which occasion the whole Coffee-house 
would hush itself into silence, as if sure to 
hear something noteworthy. Nay, perhaps to 
hear a whole series and river of the most 
memorable utterances; such as, when once 
thawed, he would for hours indulge in, with fit 
audience: and the more memorable, as issu- 
ing from a head apparently not more inter- 
ested in them, not more conscious of them, 
than is the sculptured stone head of some pub- 
lic fountain, which through its brass mouth- 
tube emits water to the worthy and the un- 
worthy; careless whether it be for cooking 
victuals or quenching conflagrations: indeed, 
maintains the same earnest assiduous look, 
whether any water be flowing or not. 

To the Editor of these Sheets, as to a young 
enthusiastic Englishman, however unworthy, 
Teufelsdrockh opened himself perhaps more 
than to the most. Pity only that we could not 
then half guess his importance, and scrutinize 
him with due power of vision ! We enjoyed, 
what not three men in Weissnichtwo could 
boast of, a certain degree of access to the 
Professor's private domicile. It was the attic 
floor of the highest house in the Wahngasse; 
and might truly be called the pinnacle of Weiss- 
nichtwo, for it rose sheer up above the contig- 
uous roofs, themselves rising from elevated 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 25 

ground. Moreover, with its windows it looked 
toward all the four Orte^ or as the Scotch say, 
and we ought to say, Airts: the sitting-room 
itself commanding three ; another came to view 
in the Schlafgemach (bedroom) at the opposite 
end; to say nothing of the kitchen, which 
offered two, as it were, duplicates, and show- 
ing nothing new. So that it was in fact the 
speculum or watch-tower of Teufelsdrockh ; 
wherefrom, sitting at ease, he could see the 
whole life-circulation of that considerable City; 
the streets and lanes of which, with all their 
doing and driving {Thim itnd Treiben), were for 
the most part visible there. 

"I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee- 
hive, " have we heard him say, "and witness 
their wax-laying, and honey-making, and 
poison-brewing, and choking by sulphur. 
From the Palace esplanade, where music plays 
while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his 
victuals, down to the low lane, where in her 
door-sill the aged widow, knitting for a thin 
livelihood, sits to feel the afternoon sun, I see 
it all ; for, except the Schlosskirche weather- 
cock, no biped stands so high. Couriers arrive 
bestrapped and bebooted, bearing Joy and 
Sorrow bagged-up in pouches of leather: 
there, top laden, and with four sv\^ift horses, 
rolls in the country Byron and his household ; 
here, on timber-leg, the lamed Soldier hops 
painfully along, begging alms: a thousand car- 
riages, and wains and cars, come tumbling in 
with Food, with young Rusticity, and other 
Raw Produce, inanimate or animate, and go 



26 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

tumbling out again with Produce manufac- 
tured. That living flood, pouring through 
these streets, of all qualities and ages, know- 
est thou whence it is coming, whither it is 
going? Aus der Ezvigkeit, zii dcr Ewigkeit hin : 
From Eternity, onward to Eternity! These 
are Apparitions: what else? Are they not 
Souls rendered visible: in Bodies, that took 
shape and will lose it, melting into air? Their 
solid Pavement is a Picture of the Sense ; they 
walk on the bosom of Nothing, blank Time is 
behind them and before them. Or fanciest 
thou, the red and yellow Clothes-screen yon- 
der, with spurs on its heels and feather in its 
crown, is but of To-day, without a Yesterday 
or a To-morrow ; and had not rather its Ances- 
tor alive when Hengst and Horsa overran thy 
Island? Friend, thou seest here a living link 
in that Tissue of History, which inweaves all 
Being: watch well, or it will be past thee, and 
seen no more. ' ' 

'^Ach, mein LieberT' said he once, at mid- 
night, when we had returned from the Coffee- 
hiouse in rather earnest talk, "it is a true sub- 
limity to dwell here. These fringes of lamp- 
light, struggling up through smoke and 
thousandfold exhalation, some fathoms into the 
ancient reign of Night, what thinks Bootes of 
them, as he leads his Hunting-Dogs over the 
Zenith in their leash of sidereal fire? That 
stifled hum of Midnight, when Traffic has lain 
down to rest ; and the chariot-wheels of Vanity, 
still rolling here and there through distant 
streets, are bearins: her to Halls roofed-in, and 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 27 

lighted to the due pitch for her; and only Vice 
or Misery, to prowl or to moan like nightbirds, 
are abroad: that hum, I say, like the stertor- 
ous, unquiet slumber of sick Life, is heard in 
Heaven! Oh, under that hideous coverlet of 
vapors, and putrefactions, and unimaginable 
gases, what a Fermenting- vat lies simmering 
and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful are 
there; men are dying there, men are being 
born; men are praying, — on the other side of a 
brick partition, men are cursing ; and around 
them all is the vast, void Night. The proud 
Grandee still lingers in his perfumed saloons, 
or reposes within damask curtains ; Wretched- 
ness cowers into truckle-beds, or shivers hun- 
ger-stricken into its lair of straw: in obscure 
cellars. Rouge -et-Noir languidly emits its voice- 
of-destiny to haggard hungry Villains; while 
Councilors of State sit plotting, and playing 
their high chess-game, whereof the pawns are 
Men. The Lover whispers his mistress that 
the coach is ready; and she, full of hope and 
fear, glides down, to fly with him over the 
boarders: the Thief, still more silently, sets-to 
his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till 
the watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay 
mansions, with supper-rooms and dancing- 
rooms, are full of light and music and high- 
swelling hearts; but, in the Condemned Cells, 
the pulse of life beats tremulous and faint, and 
bloodshot eyes look out through the darkness, 
which is around and within, for the light of a 
stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged 
on the morrow : comes no hammering from the 



28 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Rabe?tstei?if — their gallows must even now be 
a-bnilding? Upward of five-hundred-thou- 
sand two-legged animals without feathers lie 
round us, in horizontal positions; their heads 
all in night-caps, and full of the foolishest 
dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and 
swaggers in his rank dens of shame; and the 
Mother, with streaming hair, kneels over her 
pallid dying infant, whose cracked lips only her 
tears now moisten. — All these heaped and hud- 
dled together, with nothing but a little car- 
pentry and masonry between them ; crammed 
in, like salted fish in their barrel ; — or welter- 
ing, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of 
tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head 
above the others: such work goes on under 
that smoke-counterpane! — but I, jnein werther, 
sit above it all ; I am alone with the Stars. ' ' 

We looked in his face to see whether, in the 
utterance of such extraordinary Night- 
thoughts, no feeling might be traced there; 
but with the light we had, which indeed was 
only a single tallow-light, and far enough from 
the window, nothing save that old calmness 
and fixedness was visible. 

These were the Professor's talking seasons: 
most commonly he spoke in mere m^onysyl- 
lables, or sat altogether silent and smoked; 
while the visitor had liberty either to say what 
he listed, receiving for answer an occasional 
grunt ; or to look round for a space, and then 
take himself away. It was a strange apart- 
ment ; full of books and tattered papers, and 
miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable sub- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 29 

stances, "united in a common element of 
dust." Books lay on tables, and below tables; 
here fluttered a sheet of manuscript, there a 
torn handkerchief, or night-cap hastily thrown 
aside ; ink-bottles alternated with bread-crusts, 
coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, Periodical Litera- 
ture, and Blucher Boots. Old Lieschen (Lise- 
kin, 'Liza), who was his bed-maker and stove- 
lighter, his washer and wringer, cook, errand- 
maid, and general lion's-provider, and for the 
rest a very orderly creature, had no sovereign 
authority in this last citadel of Teufelsdrockh ; 
only some once in the month she half-forcibly 
made her way thither, with broom and duster, 
and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manu- 
scripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-deliv- 
ery of such lumber as was not Literary. These 
were her Erdbeben (earthquakes), which Teu- 
felsdrockh dreaded worst than the pestilence ; 
nevertheless, to such length he had been forced 
to comply. Glad would he have been to sit 
here philosophizing forever, or till the litter, 
by accumulation, drove him out of doors: but 
Lieschen was his right-arm, and spoon, and 
necessary of life, and would not be flatly gain- 
said. We can still remember the ancient 
woman ; so silent that some thought her dumb ; 
deaf also you would often have supposed her; 
for Teufelsdrockh, and Teufelsdrockh only, 
would she serve or give heed to ; and with him 
she seemed to communicate chiefly by signs; if 
it were not rather by some secret divination 
that she guessed all his wants, and supplied 
them. Assiduous old dame,! she scoured, and 



30 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

sorted, and swept, in her kitchen, with the 
least possible violence to the ear; yet all was 
tight and right there : hot and black came the 
coffee ever at the due moment; and the 
speechless Lieschen herself looked out on you, 
from under her clean white coil with its lap- 
pets, through her clean withered face and 
wrinkles, with a look of helpful intelligence, 
almost of benevolence. 

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admit- 
tance hither: the only one we ever saw there, 
ourselves excepted, was the Hofrath Heu- 
schrecke, already known, by name and expec- 
tation, to the readers of these pages. To us, 
at that period, Herr Heuschrecke seemed one of 
those purse-mouthed, crane-necked, clean- 
brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps suffi- 
ciently distinguished in society by this fact, 
that, in dry weather or in wet, ' they never 
appear without their umbrella. " Had we not 
known with what "little wisdom" the world is 
governed ; and how, in Germany as elsewhere, 
the ninety-and-nine Public Men can for most 
part be but mute train-bearers to the hun- 
dredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing 
or unwilling dupes, — it might have seemed 
wonderful how Herr Heuschrecke should be 
named a Rath, or Councilor, and Counselor, 
even in Weissnichtwo. What counsel to any 
man, or to any woman, could this particular 
Hofrath give: in whose loose, zigzag figure; 
on whose thin visage, as it went jerking to and 
fro, in minute incessant fluctuation, — you 
traced rather confusion worse confounded ; at 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 31 

•most, Timidity and physical Cold? Some in- 
deed said withal, he was "the very Spirit of 
Love embodied :" blue earnest eyes, full of sad- 
ness and kindness; purse ever open, and so 
forth; the whole of which, we shall now hope, 
for many reasons, was not quite groundless. 
Nevertheless friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, 
who indeed handled the burin like few in these 
cases, was probably the best : Er hat Gemiith 
tind Geist, hat wenigstens gehabt, dock oh?ie Organ, 
ohne Schicksals- Gunst: ist gegenwartig aber halb- 
gerruttet, halberstarrty "He has heart and talent, 
at least has had such, yet without fit mode of 
utterance, or favor of Fortune ; and so is now 
half-cracked, half-congealed." — What the 
Hofrath shall think of this when he sees it, 
readers may wonder: we, safe in the strong- 
hold of Historical Fidelity, are careless. 

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his 
love of Teufelsdrockh, which indeed was also 
by far the most decisive feature of Heuschrecke 
himself. We are enabled to assert that he 
hung on the Professor with the fondness of a 
Boswell for his Johnson. And perhaps with 
the like return; for Teufelsdrockh treated his 
gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as 
some half-rational or altogether irrational 
friend, and at best loved him out of gratitude 
and by habit. On the other hand, it was curi- 
ous to observe with what reverent kindness, 
and a sort of fatherly protection, our Hofrath, 
being the elder, richer, and as he fondly imag- 
ined far more practically influential of the two, 
looked and tended on his little Sage, whom he 



32 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

seemed to consider as a living oracle. Let 
but Teufelsdrockh open his mouth, Heusch- 
recke's also unpuckered itself into a free door- 
way, besides his being all eye and all ear, so 
that nothing might be lost: and then, at every 
pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his 
pursy chuckle of a cough-laugh (for the ma- 
chinery of laughter took some time to get in 
motion, and seemed crank and slack), or else 
his twanging nasal Bravo! Das glaub' ich; in 
either case, by way of heartiest approval. In 
short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, of 
which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion, and 
god-like indifference, there was no symptom, 
then might Heuschrecke pass for his chief 
Talapoin, to whom no dough-pill he could 
knead and publish was other than medicinal 
and sacred. 

In such environment, social, domestic, phys- 
ical, did Teufelsdrockh, at the time of our 
acquaintance, and most likely does he still, 
live and meditate. Here, perched up in his 
high Wahngasse watch-tower, and often, in 
solitude, outwatching the Bear, it v/as that 
the indomitable Inquirer fought all his battles 
with Dullness and Darkness; here in all prob- 
ability, that he wrote this surprising Volume 
on Clothes. Additional particulars: of his 
age, which was of that standing middle sort 
you could only guess at; of his wide surtout; 
the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad- 
brimmed steeple-hat, and so forth, we might 
report, but do not. — The Wisest truly is, in 
these times, the Greatest ; so that an enlight- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 33 

ened curiosity, leaving- Kings and suchlike to 
rest very much on their own basis, turns more 
and more to the Philosophic Class: neverthe- 
less, what reader expects that, with all our 
writing and reporting, Teufelsdrockh could 
be brought home to him, till once the Docu- 
ments arrive? His Life, Fortunes, and Bodily 
Presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter 
only of faint conjecture. But, on the other 
hand, does not his Soul lie enclosed in this 
remarkable Volume, much more truly than 
Pedro Garcia's did in the buried Bag of 
Doubloons? To the soul of Diogenes Teufels- 
drockh, to his opinions, namely, on the *' Origin 
and Influence of Clothes," we for the present 
gladly return. 



3 Sartor Besartns 



34 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHARACTERISTICS. 

It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend 
that this Work on Clothes entirely contents us; 
that it is not, like all works of genius, like the 
very Sun, which, though the highest published 
creation, or work of genius, has nevertheless 
black spots and troubled nebulosities amid its 
effulgence, — a mixture of insight, inspiration, 
with dullness, double-vision, and even utter 
blindness. 

Without committing ourselves to those 
enthusiastic praises and prophesyings of the 
Weissnichtwd sche Anzeiger^ we admitted that the 
book had in a high degree excited us to self- 
activity, which is the best effect of any book , 
that it had even operated changes in our way 
of thought ; nay, that it promised to prove, as 
it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, 
wherein the whole world of Speculation might 
henceforth dig to unknown depths. More 
especially it may now be declared that Pro- 
fessor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, patience 
of research, philosophic and even poetic vigor, 
are here made indisputably manifest; and 
unhappily no less his prolixity and tortuosity 
and manifold inepitude; that on the whole, as 
in opening new mine-shafts is not unreason- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 35 

able, there is much rubbish in his Book, 
though likewise specimens of almost invalu- 
able ore. A paramount popularity in England 
we cannot promise him. Apart from the 
choice of such a topic as Clothes, too often the 
manner of treating it betokens in the Author 
a rusticity and academic seclusion, unblam- 
able, indeed inevitable in a German, but fatal 
to his success with our public. 

Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to 
have seen little, or has mostly forgotten what 
he saw. He speaks out with a strange plain- 
ness; calls many things by their mere diction- 
ary names. To him the Upholsterer is no 
Pontiff, neither is any Drawing-room a Temple, 
were it never so begilt and overhung: "a 
whole immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier- 
glasses, and or-molu," as he himself expresses 
it, ''cannot hide from me that such Drawing- 
room is simply a section of Infinite Space, 
where so many God-created Souls, do for the 
time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the 
highest Duchess is respectable, is venerable; 
but nowise for her pearl bracelets and Malines 
laces; in his eyes, the star of a Lord is little 
less and little more than the broad button of 
Birmingham spelter in a Clown's mock; "each 
is an implement," he says, "in its kind; a tag 
for hooking- together; and, for the rest, was 
dug from the earth, and hammered on a stithy 
before smith's fingers." Thus does the Pro- 
fessor look in men's faces with a strange 
impartiality, a strange scientific freedom ; like 
a man unversed in the higher circles, like a 



36 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

man dropped thither from the Moon. Rightly- 
considered, it is in this peculiarity, running 
through his whole s.ystem of thought, that all 
these short-comings, over-shooting, and multi- 
form perversities, take rise: if indeed they 
have not a second source, also natural enough, 
in his Transcendental Philosophies, and humor 
of looking at all Matter and Material things as 
Spirit; whereby truly his case were but the 
more hopeless, the more lamentable. 

To the Thinkers of this nation, however, of 
which class it is firmly believed there are indi- 
viduals yet extant, we can safely recommend 
the Work: nay, who knows but among the 
fashionable ranks too, if it be true, as Teufels- 
drockh maintains, that "within the most 
starched cravat there passes a windpipe and 
weasand, and under the thickliest embroidered 
waistcoat beats a heart," — the force of that 
rapt earnestness may be felt, and here and 
there an arrow of the soul pierce through? In 
our wild Seer, shaggy, unkempt, like a Bap- 
tist living on locusts and wild honey, there is 
an untutored energy, a silent, as it were 
unconscious, strength, which, except in the 
higher walks of Literature, must be rare. 
Many a deep glance, and often with unspeak- 
able precision, has he cast into mysterious- 
Nature, and the still more mysterious Life of 
Man. Wonderful it is with what cutting 
words, now and then, he severs asunder the 
confusion ; shears down, were it furlongs deep, 
into the true center of the matter; and there 
not only hits the nail on the head, but with 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 37 

crushing force smites it home, and buries it. 
— On the other hand, let us be free to admit, 
he is the most unequal writer breathing. 
Often after some such feat, he will play truant 
for long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, 
and mumbling, and maundering the merest 
commonplaces, as if he were asleep with eyes 
open, which indeed he is. 

Of his boundless Learning, and how all 
reading and literature in most known tongues, 
from Sanchoniathon to Dr. Lingard, from your 
Oriental Shasters, and Talmuds, and Korans, 
with Cassini's Siamese Tables, and Laplace's 
Mecanique Celeste, down to Robinson Crusoe 
and the Belfast Town and Country Almanack, 
are familiar to him, — we shall say nothing: for 
unexampled as it is with us, to the Germans 
such universality of study passes without won- 
der, as a thing commendable, indeed, but nat- 
ural, indispensable, and there of course. A 
man that devotes his life to learning, shall he 
not be learned? 

In respect of style our Author manifests the 
same genial capability, marred too often by 
the same rudeness, inequality, and apparent 
want of intercourse with the higher classes. 
Occasionally, as above hinted, we nnd consum- 
mate vigor, a true inspiration; his burning 
thoughts step forth in fit burning words, like 
so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid 
flame and splendor from Jove's head; a rich, 
idiomatic diction, picturesque allusions, fiery 
poetic emphasis, or quaint tricksy turns; all 
the graces and terrors of a wild Imagination, 



38 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

wedded to the clearest Intellect, alternate in 
beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that sheer 
sleeping and soporific passages; circumlocu- 
tions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting 
jargon, so often intervene! On the whole. 
Professor Teufelsdrockh is not a cultivated 
writer. Of his sentences perhaps not more 
than nine-tenths stand straight on their legs; 
the remainder are in quite angular attitudes, 
buttressed-up by props (of parentheses and 
dashes), and ever with this or the other tag-rag 
hanging from them; a few even sprawl out 
helplessly on all sides, quite broken backed and 
dismembered. Nevertheless, in almost his 
very worst moods, there lies in him a singular 
attraction. A wild tone pervades tne whole 
utterance of the man, like its keynote and reg- 
ulator; now screwing itself aloft as into the 
Song of Spirits, or else the shrill mockery of 
Fiends; now sinking in cadences, not without 
melodious heartiness, though sometimes 
abrupt enough, into the common pitch, when 
we hear it only as a monotonous hum; of 
which hum the true character is extremely 
difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never 
fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and 
hum of real Humor, which we reckon among 
the very highest qualities of genius, or some 
echoes of mere Insanity and Inanity, which 
doubtless ranks below the very lowest. 

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our 
personal intercourse, do we still lie with 
regard to the Professor's moral feeling. 
Gleams of an ethereal love burst forth from 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 39 

him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could 
clasp the whole Universe into his bosom, and 
keep it warm; it seems as if tinder that rude 
exterior there dwelt a very seraph. Then 
again he is so sly and still, so imperturbably 
sturnaine ; shows such indifference, such malign 
coolness toward all that men strive after; and 
ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a bitter 
sardonic humor, if indeed it be not mere stolid 
callousness, — that you look on him almost 
with a shudder, as on some incarnate Mephis- 
topheles, to whom this great terrestrial and 
celestial Round, after all, were but some huge 
foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, 
and angels and demons, and stars and street- 
sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which 
onl}^' children could take interest. His look, 
as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever 
seen; yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity 
frequent enough among our own Chancery 
suitors; but rather the gravity as of some 
silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps 
the crater of an extinct volcano ; into whose 
black deeps you fear to gaze ; those eyes, those 
lights that sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes 
of the heavenly Stars, but perhaps also glances 
from the region of Nether Fire! 

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, 
altogether enigmatic nature, this of Teufels- 
drockh ! Here, however, v/e gladly recall to 
mind that once we saw him laugh; once only, 
perhaps it was the first and last time in his life ; 
but then such a peal of laughter, enough to 
have awakened the Seven Sleepers! It was of 



40 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Jean Paul's doing; some single billow in that 
vast World-Mahlstrom of Humor, with its 
heaven-kissing coruscations, which is now, 
alas, all congealed in the frost of death! The 
large-bodied Poet and the small, both large 
enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously 
together, the present Editor being privileged 
to listen; and now Paul, in his serious way, 
was giving one of those inimitable "Extra-har- 
angues:" and, as it chanced. On the Proposal for 
a Cast-metal King: gradually a light kindled 
in our Professor's eyes and face, a beaming, 
mantling, loveliest light ; through those murky 
features, a radiant, ever- young Apollo looked ; 
and he burst forth like the neighing of all 
Tattersall's, — tears streaming down his cheeks, 
pipe held aloft, foot clutched into the air, — 
loud, long-continuing, uncontrollable; a laugh 
not of the face and diaphragm only, but of the 
whole man from head to heel. The present 
Editor, who laughed indeed, yet with measure, 
began to fear all was not right: however, 
Teufelsdrockh composed himself, and sank into 
his old stillness ; on his inscrutable countenance 
there was, if anything, a slight look of shame; 
and Richter himself could not rouse him again. 
Readers who have any tincture of Psychology 
know how much is to be inferred from this: 
and that no man who has once heartily and 
wholly laughed can be altogether irreclaimably 
bad. How much lies in Laughter: the cipher- 
key, wherewith we decipher the whole man! 
Some men wear an everlasting barren simper; 
in the smile of others lies a cold glitter as of 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 41 

ice: the fewest are able to laugh, what can be 
called laughing, but only sniff and titter and 
snigger from the throat outward; or at best, 
produce some whiffling husky cachinnation, as 
if they were laughing through wool: of none 
such comes good. The man who cannot laugh 
is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and 
spoils; but his whole life is already a treason 
and a stratagem. 

Considered as an Author, Herr Teufels- 
drockh has one scarcely pardonable fault, doubt- 
less his worst: an almost total want of arange- 
ment. In this remarkable Volume, it is true, 
his adherence to the mere course of Time pro- 
duces, through the Narrative portions, a 
certain show of outward method ; but of true 
logical method and sequence there is too little. 
Apart from its multifarious sections and sub- 
divisions, the Work naturally falls into two 
Parts; a Historical-Descriptive, and a Philo- 
sophical-Speculative: but falls unhappily, by 
no firm line of demarkation ; in that labyrin- 
thic combination, each Part overlaps, and 
indents, and indeed runs quite through the 
other. Many sections are of a debatable 
rubric, or even quite nondescript and unnama- 
ble ; whereby the Book not only loses in acces- 
sibility, but too often distresses us like some 
mad banquet, wherein all courses had been 
confounded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, 
oyster-sauce, lettuces, Rhine-wine and French 
mustard, were hurled into one huge tureen 
or trough, and the hungry Public invited to 
help itself. To bring what order we can out 
of this Chaos shall be part of our endeavor. 

4 Sartor Resartua 



42 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER V. 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 



"As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws," 
observes our Professor, "so could I write a 
Spirit of Clothes; thus, with an Esprit des Lois, 
properly an Esprit de Coutiimes, we should have 
an Esprit de Costumes. For neither in tailor- 
ing nor in legislating does man proceed by 
mere Accident, but the hand is ever guided 
on by mysterious operations of the mind. In 
all his Modes, and habilatory endeavors, an 
Architectural Idea will be found lurking; his 
Body and the Cloth are the site and materials 
whereon and whereby his beautified edifice, of 
a Person, is to be built. Whether he flow 
gracefully out in folded mantles, based on light 
sandals ; tower-up in high headgear, from amid 
peaks, spangles and bell-girdles; swell out in 
starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and mon- 
strous tuberosities ; or girth himself into sep- 
arate sections, and front the world an Agglom- 
eration of four limbs, — will depend on the 
nature of such Architectural Idea: whether 
Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether 
Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-Dandiacal. 
Again, what meaning lies in Color! From 
the soberest drab to the high-flaming scarlet, 
spiritual idiosyncrasies unfold themselves in 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 43 

choice of Color: if the Cut betoken Intellect 
and Talent, so does the Color betoken Temper 
and Heart. In all which, among nations as 
among individuals, there is an incessant, in- 
dubitable, though infinitely complex working 
of Cause and Effect : every snip of the Scissors 
has been regulated and prescribed by ever- 
active Influences, which doubtless to Intelli- 
gences of a superior order are neither invisible 
nor illegible. 

' ' For such superior Intelligences a Cause-and- 
Effect Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were 
probably a comfortable winter-evening enter- 
tainment: nevertheless, for inferior Intelli- 
gences, like men, such Philosophies have 
always seemed to me uninstructive enough. 
Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but a 
clever infant spelling Letters from a hiero- 
glyphical prophetic Book, the lexicon of which 
lies in Eternity, in Heaven? — Let any Cause- 
and- Effect Philosopher explain, not why I 
wear such and such a Garment, obey such and 
such a Law ; but even why I am here, to wear 
and obey anything! — Much, therefore, if not 
the whole, of that same Spirit of Clothes I 
shall suppress, as hypothetical, ineffectual, 
and even impertinent: naked Facts, and 
Deductions drawn therefrom in quite another 
than that omniscient style, are my humbler 
and proper province. 

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teu- 
felsdrockh has nevertheless contrived to take- 
in a well-nigh boundless extent of field; at 
least, the boundaries too often lie quite beyond 



44 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

our horizon. Selection being indispensable, 
we shall here glance over his First Part only 
in the most cursory manner. This First Parr 
is, no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous 
learning, and utmost patience and fairness: 
at the same time, in its results and delinea- 
tions, it is much more likely to interest the 
Compilers of some Library of General, Enter- 
taining, Useful, or even Useless Knowledge 
than the miscellaneous readers of these pages. 
Was it this Part of the Book which Heusch- 
recke had in view, when he recommended us 
to that joint-stock vehicle publication, "at 
present the glory of British Literature?" If 
so, the Library Editors are welcome to dig 
in it for their own behoof. 

To the First Chapter, which turns on Para- 
dise and Fig-leaves, and leads us into inter- 
minable disquisitions of a mythological, meta- 
phorical, cabalistico-sartorial and quite antedi- 
luvian cast, we shall content ourselves with 
giving an unconcerned approval. Still less 
have we to do with "Lilis, Adam's first wife, 
whom, according to the Talmudists, he had 
before Eve, and who bore him, in that wedlock, 
the whole progeny of aerial, aquatic, and 
terrestrial Devils, ' ' — very needlessly, we think. 
On this portion of the Work, with its profound 
glances into the Adam-Kadmon, or Primeval 
Element, here strangely brought into relation 
with the Nifl and Muspel (Darkness and Light) 
of the antique North, it may be enough to say 
that its correctness of deduction, and depth of 
Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled per- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 45 

haps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with 
something like astonishment. 

But, quitting- this twilight region, Teufels- 
drockh hastens from the Tower of Babel, to 
follow the dispersion of Mankind over the 
whole habitable and habilable globe. Walk- 
ing by the light of Oriental, Pelasgic, Scan- 
dinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient and 
Modern researches of every conceivable kind, 
he strives to give us in compressed shape (as 
the Nurnbergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis 
Vestitus ; or view of the costumes of all man- 
kind, in all countries, in all times. It is here 
that to the Antiquarian, to the Historian, we 
can triumphantly say: Fall to! Here is learn- 
ing: an irregular Treasury, if you will; but 
inexhaustible as the Hoard of King Nibelung, 
which twelve wagons in twelve days, at the 
rate of three journeys a day, could not carry 
off. Sheepskin cloaks and wampum belts; 
phylacteries, stoles, albs; chalamydes, togas, 
Chinese silks, Afghan shawls, trunk-hose, 
leather breeches, Celtic philibegs (though 
breeches, as the name Gallia Braccata indicates, 
are the more ancient). Hussar cloaks, Vandyke 
tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are brought vividly 
before us, — even the Kilmarnock nightcap is 
not forgotten. For most part, too, we must 
admit that the Learning, heterogeneous as 
it is, and tumble-down quite pell-mell, is true 
concentrated and purified Learning, the drossy 
parts smelted out and thrown aside. 

Philosophical reflections intervene, and 
sometimes .touching pictures of human life. 



46 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Of this sort the following has surprised us. 
The first purpose of Clothes, as our Professor 
imagines, was not warmth or decency, but 
ornament. ''Miserable indeed, " says he, "was 
the condition of the Aboriginal Savage, glar- 
ing fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which 
with the beard reached down to his loins, and 
hung round him like a matted cloak ; the rest 
of his body sheeted in its thick natural fell. 
He loitered in the sunny glades of the forest, 
living on wild-fruits; or, as the ancient Cale- 
donian, squatted himself in morasses, lurking 
for his bestial or human prey; without imple- 
ments, without arms, save the ball of heavy 
Flint, to which, that his sole possession and 
defense might not be lost, he had attached 
a long cord of plaited thongs; thereby recover- 
ing as well as hurling it with deadly unerring 
skill. Nevertheless, the pains of Hunger and 
Revenge once satisfied, his next care was not 
Comfort but Decoration (Puts). Warmth he 
found in the toils of the chase; or amid dried 
leaves, in his hollow tree, in his bark shed, or 
natural grotto; but for Decoration he must 
have Clothes. Nay, among wild people, we 
find tattooing and painting even prior to 
Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbar- 
ous man is Decoration, as indeed we still see 
among the barbarous classes in civilized 
countries. 

"Reader, the heaven-inspired melodious 
Singer; loftiest Serene Highness; nay thy own 
amber-locked, snow-and-rose-bloom Maiden, 
worthy to glide sylph-like almost on air. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. . 47 

whom thou lovest, worshipest as a divine 
Presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, 
she is, — has descended, like thyself, from that 
same hair-mantled, flint-hurling Aboriginal 
Anthropophagus! Out of the eater cometh 
forth meat; out of the strong cometh forth 
sweetness. What changes are wrought, not 
by Time, yet in Time! For not Mankind 
only, but all that Mankind does or beholds, 
is in continual growth, regenesis and self-per- 
fecting vitality. Cast forth thy Act, thy Word, 
into the ever-living, ever- working Universe: 
it is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed 
to-day (says one), it will be found flourishing 
as a Banyan-grove (perhaps, alas, as a Hem- 
lock-forest !) after a thousand years. 

"He who first shortened the labor of Copy- 
ists by device of Movable Types was disband- 
ing hired Armies, and cashiering most Kings 
and Senates, and creating a whole new Demo- 
cratic world: he had invented the Art of Print- 
ing. The first ground handful of Niter, Sul- 
phur, and Charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's 
pestle through the ceiling: what will the last 
do? Achieve the final undisputed prostration 
of Force under Thought, of Animal courage 
under Spiritual. A simple invention it was 
in the old-world Grazier, — sick of lugging his 
slow Ox about the country till he got it bar- 
tered for corn or oil, — to take a piece of 
Leather, and thereon scratch or stamp the mere 
Figure of an Ox (or Pecus) : put it in his pocket, 
and call it Pecu?iia, Money. Yet hereby did 
Barter grow Sale, the Leather Money is now 



48 . SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Golden and Paper, and all miracles have been 
out-miracled: for there are Rothschilds and 
English National Debts; and whoso has six- 
pence is sovereign (to the length of sixpence) 
over all men; commands cooks to feed him, 
philosophers to teach him, kings to mount 
guard over him, — to the length of sixpence. — • 
Clothes, too, which began in foolishest love of 
Ornament, what have they not become ! In- 
creased security and pleasurable Heat soon 
followed: but what of these? Shame, divine 
Shame (Scham, Modesty), as j^et a stranger to 
the Anthropophagus bosom, arose there mys- 
teriously under Clothes; a mystic grove- 
encircled shrine for the Holy in man. Clothes 
gave us individuality, distinctions, social 
polity; Clothes have made Men of us; they 
are threatening to make Clothes - screens 
of us. 

"But, on the whole," continues our eloquent 
Professor, "Man is a Tool-using Animal 
{Handthierendes Thier). Weak in himself, and 
of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most 
for the flattest-soled, of some half- square foot, 
insecurely enough; has to straddle out his 
legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest 
of bipeds ! Three quintals are a crushing load 
for him ; the steer of the meadow tosses him 
aloft, like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can 
use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the 
granite mountain melts into light dust before 
him; he kneads glowing iron, as if it \yere 
soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds 
and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 49 

you find him without Tools; without Tools he 
is nothing, with Tools he is all." 

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt 
the stream of Oratory with a remark, that this 
Definition of the Tool-using Animal appears 
to us, of all that Animal-sort, considerably the 
precisest and best? Man is called a Laughing 
Animal: but do not the apes also laugh, or 
attempt to do it: and is the manliest man the 
greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh 
himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still 
less do we make of that other French Definition 
of the Cooking Animal; which, indeed, for 
rigorous scientific purposes, is as good as use- 
less. Can a Tartar be said to cook, when he 
only readies his steak by riding on it? Again, 
what Cookery does the Greenlander use, 
beyond stowing-up his whale-blubber, as a 
marmot, in the like case, might do? Or how 
would Monsieur Ude prosper among those 
Orinoco Indians who, according to Humboldt, 
lodge in crow-nests, on the branches of trees; 
and, for half the year, have no victuals but 
pipe-clay, the whole country being under 
water? But, on the other hand, show us the 
human being, of any period or climate, with- 
out his Tools: those very Caledonians, as we 
saw, had their Flint-ball, and Thong to it, such 
as no brute has or can have. 

**Man is a Tool-using Animal," concludes 
Teufelsdrockh in his abrupt way; "of which 
truth Clothes are but one example ; and surely 
if we consider the interval between the first 
wooden Dibble fashioned by man, and those 

4 



50 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Liverpool Steam-carriages, or the British 
House of Commons, we shall note what prog- 
ress he has made. He digs up certain black 
stones from the bosom of the earth, and says 
to them, Transport me and this luggage at the 
rate of five-and-thirty miles an hour; and they 
do it : he collects, apparently by lot, six hun- 
dred and fifty-eight miscellaneous individuals, 
and says to them, Make this nation toil for us, 
bleed for us, hunger and sorrow and sin for 
us ; and they do it. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 51 



CHAPTER VI. 

APRONS. 

One of the most unsatisfactory Sections in 
the whole Volume is that on Aprons. What 
though stout old Gao, the Persian Blacksmith, 
"whose Apron, now indeed hidden under 
jewels, because raised in revolt which proved 
successful, is still the royal standard of that 
country;" what though John Knox's Daughter, 
"who threatened Soverign Majesty that she 
would catch her husband's head in her Apron, 
rather than he should lie and be a bishop;" 
what though the Landgravine Elizabeth, with 
many other Apron worthies, — figure here? 
An idle wire-drawing spirit, sometimes even 
a tone of levity, approaching to conven- 
tional satire, is too clearly discernable. What, 
for example, are we to make of such sen- 
tences as the following? 

"Aprons are Defenses; against injury to 
cleanliness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to 
roguery. From the thin slip of notched silk 
(as it were, the emblem and beatified ghost 
of an Apron), which some highest-bred house- 
wife, sitting at Nurnberg Workboxes and Toy- 
boxes, has gracefully fastened on; to the 
thick-tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, 
wherein the Builder builds, and at evening 



52 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Sticks his trowel; or to those jingling sheet- 
iron Aprons, wherein your otherwise half- 
naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in their 
smelt-furnace, — is there not range enough in 
the fashion and uses of this Vestment? How 
much has been concealed, how much has been 
defended in Aprons! Nay, rightfully consid- 
ered, what is 5'^our whole Military and Police 
Establishment, charged at uncalculated mil- 
lions, but a huge scarlet-colored, iron-fastened 
Apron, wherein Society works (uneasily 
enough) guarding itself from some soil and 
stithy-sparks, in this Devil's-smithy {Teufels- 
schmiede) of a world? But of all Aprons the 
most puzzling to me hitherto has been the 
Episcopal or Cossack. Wherein consists the 
usefulness of this Apron? The Overseer 
(Episcopiis) of Souls, I notice, has tucked in the 
corner of it, as if his day's work were done: 
what does he shadow forth thereby?" etc., etc. 

Or, again, has it often been the lot of our 
readers to read such stuff as we shall now 
quote? 

"I consider those printed Paper Aprons, 
worn by the Parisian Cooks, as a new vent, 
though a slight one, for Typography; there- 
fore as an encouragement to modern Litera- 
ture, and deserving of approval: nor is it with- 
out satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated 
London Firm having in view to introduce the 
same fashion, with important extensions, in 
England. " — We who are on the spot hear of no 
such thing ; and indeed have reason to be 
thankful that hitherto there are other vents for 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 53 

our Literature, exuberant as it is. — Teufels- 
drockh continues: "If such supply of printed 
Paper should rise so far as to choke-up the 
highways and public thoroughfares, new means 
must of necessity be had recourse to. In a 
world existing by Industry, we grudge to 
employ fire as a destroying element, and not 
as a creating one. However, Heaven is om- 
nipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the 
meanwhile, is it not beautiful to see five-mil- 
lion quintals of Rags picked annually from 
the Laystall; and annually, after being mace- 
rated, hot-pressed, printed-on, and sold — 
returned thither; filling so many hungry 
mouths by the way? Thus is the Laystall, 
especially with its Rags or Clothes-rubbish, 
the grand Electric Battery, and Fountain-of- 
motion, from which and to which the Social 
Activities (like vitreous and resinous Electrici- 
ties) circulate, in larger or smaller circles, 
through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost Chaos 
of Life, which they keep alive!" — Such pas- 
sages fill us, who love the man, and partly 
esteem him, with a very mixed feeling. 

Farther down we meet with this': "The 
Journalists are now the true Kings and Clergy: 
henceforth Historians, unless they are fools, 
must write not of Bourbon Dynasties, and 
Tudors and Hapsburgs; but of Stamped Broad- 
sheet Dynasties, and quite new successive 
Names, according as this or the other Able 
Editor, or Combination of Able Editors, gains 
the world's ear. Of the British Newspaper 
Press, perhaps the most important of all, and 



54 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

wonderful enough in its secret constitution 
and procedure, a valuable descriptive History 
already exists, in that language, under the 
title of Satan's Invisible World Displayed; 
which, however, by search in all the Weis- 
nich two Libraries, I have not yet succeeded 
in procuring {vermochtenicht aiifzutreibeii).'' 

Thus does the good Homer not only nod but 
snore. Thus does Teufelsdrockh, wandering 
in regions where he had little business, con- 
found the old authentic, Presbyterian Witch- 
finder with a new, spurious, imaginary Histo- 
rian of the Britische Journalistik: and so stumble 
on perhaps the most egregious blunder in 
Modern Literature! 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 55 



CHAPTER VII. 

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 

Happier is our Professor, and more purely 
scientific and historic, when he reaches the 
Middle Ages in Europe, and down to the end 
of the Seventeenth Century; the true era of 
extravagance in Costume. It is here that the 
Antiquary and Student of Modes comes upon 
his richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggar- 
ing all fancy of a Teniers or a Callot, succeed 
each other, like monster devouring monster in 
a Dream. The whole, too, in brief authentic 
strokes, and touched not seldom with that 
breath of genius v\^hich makes even old rai- 
ment live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graph- 
ical, and everyway interesting have we found 
these Chapters, that it may be thrown out as a 
pertinent question for parties concerned, 
Whether or not a good English Translation 
thereof might henceforth be profitably incor- 
porated with Mr. Merrick's valuable \Vork On 
Ancient Armor? Take, by way of example, 
the following sketch; as authority for which 
Paulinus' Zeitkiirzejide Lust (ii. 678) is, with 
seeming confidence, referred to: 

"Did we behold the German fashionable 
dress of the Fifteenth Century, we might 
smile; as perhaps those bygone Germans, were 



56 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

they to rise again, and see our haberdashery, 
would cross themselves, and invoke the Virgin. 
But happily no bygone German, or man, rises 
again; thus the Present is not needlessly tram- 
meled with the Past; and only grows out of it, 
like a Tree, whose roots are not intertangled 
with its branches, but lie peaceably under- 
ground. Nay, it is very mournful, yet not use- 
less, to see and know, how the Greatest and 
Dearest, in a short while, would find his place 
quite filled-up here, and no room for him; the 
very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven 
years, has become obsolete, and were now a 
foreigner to his Europe. Thus is the Law of 
Progress secured ; and in Clothes, as in all other 
external things whatsoever, no fashion will 
continue. 

*'Of the military classes in those old times, 
whose buff-belts, complicated chains and gor- 
gets, huge churn-boots, and other riding and 
fighting gear have been bepainted in modern 
Romance, till the whole has acquired some- 
what of a sign-post character, — I shall here say 
nothing: the civil and pacific classes, less 
touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. 

** Rich men, I find, have Teusinke'' (a perhaps 
untranslatable article); "also a silver girdle, 
whereat hang_ little bells; so that when a man 
walks, it is with continual jingling. Some 
few, of musical turn, have a whole chime of 
bells Glockenspiel) fastened there ; which, espe- 
cially in sudden whirls, and the other accidents 
of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe, 
too, how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 57 

arch intersections. The male world wears 
peaked caps, an ell long-, which hang bobbing 
over the side [schiej) : their shoes are peaked in 
front, also to the length of an ell, and laced on 
the side with tags ; even the wooden shoes have 
their ell-long noses: some also clap bells on the 
peak. Further, according to my authority, the 
men have breeches without seat {pJme Gesass) : 
these they fasten peakwise to their shirts; and 
the long round doublet must overlap them. 

*'Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns 
scolloped out behind and before, so that back 
and breast are almost bare. Wives of quality, 
on the other hand, have train-gowns four or 
five ells in length ; which trains there are boys 
to carry. Brave Cleopatras, sailing in their 
silk-cloth Galley, with a Cupid for steersman ! 
Consider their welts, a handbreath thick, which 
waver round them by way of hem ; the long 
flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, 
from throat to shoe, wherewith these same 
welt-gowns are buttoned. The maidens have 
bound silver snoods about their hair, with gold 
spangles, and pendent flames {Flammen)^ that 
is, sparkling hair-drops: but of their mother's 
headgear who shall speak? Neither in love of 
grace is comfort forgotten. In w^inter weather 
you behold the whole fair creation (that can 
afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide be- 
low, and, for hem, not one but two sufficient 
handbroad welts; all ending atop in a thick 
well-starched Ruif, some twenty inches broad: 
these are their Ruff-mantles {Kragenmantel) . 

"As yet among the womankind hoop-petti- 



58 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

coats are not ; but the men have doublets of 
fustian, under which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, 
pasted together with batter {^it Teig zusam- 
mengekleistert) , which create protuberance 
enough. Thus do the two sexes vie with each 
other in the art of Decoration ; and as usual 
the stronger carries it. ' ' 

Our Professor, whether he have humor him- 
self or not, manifests a certain feeling of the 
Ludicrous, a sly observance of it, which, could 
emotion of any kind be confidently predicated 
of so still a man, we might call a real love. 
None of those bell-girdles, bushel-breeches, 
cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, 
of which the History of Dress offers so many, 
escape him : more especially the mischances, 
or striking adventures, incident to the wearers 
of such, are noticed with due fidelity. Sir 
Walter Raleigh's fine mantle, which he spread 
in the mud under Queen Elizabeth's feet, ap- 
pears to provoke little enthusiasm in him; he 
merely asks. Whether at that period the 
Maiden Queen "was red-painted on the nose, 
and white-painted on the cheeks, as her tire- 
women, when from spleen and wrinkles she 
would no longer look in any glass, were wont 
to serve her?" We can answer that Sir Walter 
knew well what he was doing, and had the 
Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed in 
verdigris, would have done the same. 

Thus, too, treating of those enormous habil- 
iments, that were not only slashed and ga- 
looned, but artificially swollen-out on the 
broader parts of the body, by introduction of 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 69 

Bran,— our Professor fails not to comment on 
that luckless Courtier, who having seated him- 
self on a chair with some projecting nail on it, 
and therefrom rising, to pay his devoir on the 
entrance of Majesty, instantaneously emitted 
several pecks of dry wheat-dust: and stood 
there diminished to a spindle, his galoons and 
slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby round 
him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this 
reflection: 

"By what strange chances do we live in His- 
tory? Erostratus by a torch; Milo by a bul- 
lock ; Henry Darnley, an unfledged booby and 
bustard, by his limbs; most Kings and Queens 
by being born under such and such a bed-test- 
er; Boileau Despreaux (according to Helvetius) 
by the peck of a turkey; and this ill-starred 
individual by a rent in his breeches, — for no 
Memoirist of Kaiser Otto's Court omits him. 
Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a 
talent of Forgetting: my Friends, yield cheer- 
fully to Destiny, and read since it is written." 
— Has Teufelsdrockh to be put in mind that 
nearly related to the impossible talent of For- 
getting, stands the talent of Silence, which 
even traveling Englishmen manifest? 

"The simplest costume," observes our Pro- 
fessor, "which I anywhere find alluded to in 
History, is that used as regimental, by Boli- 
var's Cavalry, in the late Columbian wars. A 
square Blanket, twelve feet in diagonal, is pro- 
vided (some were wont to cut off the corners, 
and make it circular) : in the center a slit is 
effected eighteen inches long ; through this the 



60 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

mother-naked Trooper introduces his head and 
neck; and so rides shielded from all weather, 
and in battle from many strokes (for he rolls it 
about his left arm) : and not only dressed, but 
harnessed and draperied. " 

With which picture of a State of Nature, 
affecting by its singularity, and Old-Roman 
contempt of the superfluous, we shall quit this 
part of our subject. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 61 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 

If in the Descriptive-Historical portion of 
this Volume, Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely 
the Werde?i (Origin and successive Improve- 
ment) of Clothes, has astonished many a 
reader, much more will he in the Speculative- 
Philosophical portion, which treats of their 
Wirken, or Influences. It is here that the 
present Editor first feels the pressure of his 
task: for here properly the higher and new 
Philosophy of Clothes commences : an untried, 
almost inconceivable region, or chaos; in ven- 
turing upon which, how difficult, yet how un- 
speakably important, is it to know what course, 
of survey and conquest, is the true one ; where 
the footing is firm substance and will bear us, 
where it is hollow, or mere cloud, and may en- 
gulf us! Teufelsdrockh undertakes no less 
than to expound the moral, political, even 
religious Influences of Clothes; he undertakes 
to make manifest, in its thousandfold bear- 
ings, this grand Proposition, that Man's 
earthly interests "are all hooked and buttoned 
together, and held up, by Clothes." He says 
in so many words, "Society is founded upon 
Cloth;" and again, "Society sails through the 
Infinitude on Cloth, as on a Faust's Mantle, or 



62 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

rather like the Sheet of clean and unclean 
beasts in the Apostle's Dream; and without 
such Sheet or Mantle, would sink to endless 
depths, or mount to inane limboes, and in 
either case be no more." By what chains, or, 
indeed, infinitely complected tissues, of Medi- 
tation this grand Theorem is here unfolded, 
and innumerable practical Corollaries are drawn 
therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to 
attempt exhibiting-. Our Professor's method 
is not, in any case, that of common school 
Logic, where the truths all stand in a row, 
each holding by the skirts of the other; but at 
best that of practical Reason, proceeding by 
large Intuition over whole systematic groups 
and kingdoms; whereby, we might say, a 
noble complexity, almost like that of Nature, 
reigns in his Philosophy, or spiritual Picture of 
Nature : a mighty maze, yet, as faith whispers, 
not without a plan. Nay, we complained above, 
that a certain ignoble complexity, what we 
must call mere confusion, was also discernible. 
Often, also, we have to exclaim: Would to 
Heaven those same Biographical Documents 
were come! For it seems as if the demonstra- 
tion lay much in the Author's individuality: as 
if it were not Argument that had taught him, 
but Experience. At present it is only in local 
glimpses, and by significant fragments, picked 
often at wide-enough intervals from the orig- 
inal Volume, and carefully collated, that we 
can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow 
of this Doctrine. Readers of any intelligence 
are once more invited to favor us with their 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 63 

most concentrated attention: let these, after 
intense consideration, and not till then, pro- 
nounce, Whether on the utmost verge of our 
actual horizon there is not a looming as of 
Land; a promise of new Fortunate Islands, 
perhaps whole undiscovered Americas, for 
such as have canvas to sail thither? — As exor- 
dium to the whole, stand here the following 
long citation: 

"With men of a speculative turn," writes 
Teufelsdrockh, "there come seasons, meditat- 
ive, sweet, yet awful hours, when in wonder 
and fear you ask yourself that unanswerable 
question : Who am I ; the thing that can say 
*r {das Wese7i das sich Ich nenni)t The world, 
with its loud trafficking, retires into the dis- 
tance ; and, through the paper-hangings, and 
stone-walls, and thick-plied tissues of Com- 
merce and Polity, and all the living and life- 
less integuments (of Society and a Body), 
wherewith your Existence sits surrounded, — 
the sight reaches forth into the void Deep, and 
you are alone with the Universe, and silently 
commune with it, as one mysterious Presence 
w4th another. 

"Who am I; what is this Me? A Voice, a 
Motion, an Appearance; — some embodied, vis- 
ualized Idea in the Eternal Mind? Cogito, ergo 
sum. Alas, poor Cogitator, this takes us but a 
little Vv'ay. Sure-enough, I am; and lately was 
not: but Whence? How? Whereto? The 
answer lies around, written in all colors and 
motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and 
wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced. 



64 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

harmonious Nature; but where is the cunning- 
eye and ear to whom that God-written Apoca- 
lypse w^ill yield articulate meaning? We sit as 
in a boundless Phantasmagoria and Dream- 
grotto; boundless, for the faintest star, the re- 
motest century, lies not even nearer the verge 
thereof: sounds and many-colored visions flit 
round our sense; but Him, the Unslumbering, 
whose work both Dream and Dreamer are, we 
see not ; except in rare half-walking moments, 
suspect not. Creation, says one, lies before 
us, like a glorious Rainbow ; but the Sun that 
made it lies behind us, hidden from us. Then, 
in that strange Dream, how we clutch at shad- 
ows as if they were substances; and sleep deep- 
est while fancying ourselves most awake! 
Which of your Philosophical Systems is other 
than a dream-theorem ; a net quotient, confi- 
dently given out, where divisor and dividend 
are both unknown? What are all your national 
Wars, with their Moscow Retreats, and san- 
guinary hate-filled Revolutions, but the Som- 
nambulism of uneasy Sleepers? This Dream- 
ing, this Somnambulism is what we on Earth 
call Life; wherein the most, indeed, undoubt- 
ingly wander, as if they knew right hand from 
left ; yet they only are wise who know that 
they know nothing. 

"Pity that all Metaphysics had hitherto 
proved so inexpressibly unproductive! The 
secret of Man's Being is still like the Sphinx's 
secret ; a riddle that he cannot rede ; and for 
ignorance of which he suffers dea^h th^ wo^st 
death, a spiritual. What are yr . xic -is,, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 65 

and Categories, and Systems, and Aphorisms? 
Words, words. High Air-castles are cunningly 
built of Words, the Words well bedded also 
in good Logic-mortar; wherein, however, no 
Knowledge will come to lodge. The whole is 
greater than the part : how exceedingly true ! 
Nature abhors a vacuum: how exceedingly 
false, and calumnious! Again, Nothing can 
act but where it is: with all my heart; only, 
where is it? Be not the slave of Words: is not 
the Distant, the Dead, while I love it, and long 
for it, and mourn for it. Here, in the genuine 
sense, as truly as the floor I stand on? But 
that same Where, with its brother When, are 
from the first the master-colors of our Dream- 
grotto; say rather, the Canvas (the warp and 
woof thereof) whereon all our Dreams and 
Life-visions are painted. Nevertheless, has 
not a deeper meditation taught certain of 
every climate and age, that the Where and 
When, so m3^steriously inseparable from all our 
thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial adhe- 
sions to thought ; that the Seer may discern 
them where they mount up out of the celestial 
Everywhere and Forever: have not all nations 
conceived their God as Omnipresent and Eter- 
nal ; as existing in a universal Here, an ever- 
lasting Now? Think well, thou, too, wilt find 
that Space is but a mode of our human Sense, 
so likewise Time ; there is no Space and no 
Time: We are — we know not what; — light- 
sparkles floating in the aether of Deity! 

"So that this so solid-seeming World, after 
all, were but an air-image, our Me the only 

5 Sartor Resartns 



66 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

reality: and Nature, with its thousandfold 
production and destruction, but the reflex of 
our own inward Force, the "phantasy of our 
Dream;" or what the Earth- Spirit in Faust 
names it, the living visible Garment of God : 

" 'In Being's floods, in Action's storm, 
I walk and work, above, beneath. 
Work and weave in endless motion ! 

Birth and Death, 

An infinite ocean ; 

A seizing and giving 

The fire of Living: 
'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 
And weave for God the Garment thou seest Him by." 

Of twenty millions that have read and spouted 
this thunder-speech of the Erdgeist, are there 
yet twenty units of us that have learned the 
meaning thereof? 

"It was in some such mood, when wearied 
and foredone with these high speculations, that 
I first came upon the question of Clothes. 
Strange enough, it strikes me, is this same fact 
of there being Tailors and Tailored. The 
Horse I ride has his own whole fell : strip him 
of the girths and flaps and extraneous tags I 
have fastened round him, and the noble crea- 
ture is his own sempster and weaver and spin- 
ner; nay, his own boot-maker, jeweler, and 
man-milliner; he bounds free through the val- 
leys, with a perennial rainproof court-suit on 
his body; wherein warmth and easiness of fit 
have reached perfection ; nay, the graces also 
have been considered, and frills and fringes, 
with gay variety of color, featly appended, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 67 

and ever in the right place, are not wanting. 
While I — good Heaven! — have thatched myself 
over with the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of 
vegetables, the entrails of worms, the hides of 
oxen or seals, the felt of furred beasts; and 
walk abroad a moving Ragscreen, overheaped 
with shreds and tatters raked from the Char- 
nel-house of Nature, where they would have 
rotted, to rot on me more slo^vyly! Day after 
day, I must thatch myself anew ; day after day, 
this despicable thateh must lose some film of 
its thickness; some film of it, frayed away by 
tear and wear, must be brushed-off into the 
Ashpit, into the Laystall; till by degrees the 
whole has been brushed thither, and I, the 
dust-making, patent Rag- grinder, get new ina- 
terial to grind down. O subter-brutish ! vile! 
most vile ! For have not I too a compact all- 
enclosing Skin, whither or dingier? Am I a 
botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' shreds, 
then; or a tightly-articulated, homeogeneous 
little Figure, automatic, nay, alive? 

"Strange enough how creatures of the hu- 
mankind shut their eyes to plainest facts ; and 
by the mere inertia of Oblivion and Stupidity, 
live at ease in the midst of Wonder and Ter- 
rors. But, indeed, man is, and was always, a 
blockhead and dullard; much readier to feel 
and digest, than to thin and consider. Preju- 
dice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute 
lawgiver ; mere use and wont everywhere leads 
him by the nose; thus let but a Rising of the 
Sun, let but a Creation of the World happen 
twice and it ceases to be marvelous, to be note- 



68 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

worthy, or noticeable. Perhaps not once in a 
lifetime does it occur to your ordinary biped, 
of any country or generation, be he gold- 
mantled Prince or russet-jerkined . Peasant, 
that his Vestments and his Self are not one 
and indivisible ; that he is naked, without vest- 
ments, till he buy or steal such, and by fore- 
thought sew and button them. 

"For my own part, these considerations, of 
our Clothes-thatch, and how, reaching inwards 
even to our heart of hearts, it tailorizes and 
demoralizes us, fill me with a certain horror at 
myself and mankind; almost as one feels at 
those Dutch Cows, which, during the wet sea- 
son, you see grazing deliberately with jackets 
and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the 
meadows of Gouda. Nevertheless there is 
something great in the moment when a man 
first strips himself of adventitious wrappages; 
and sees, indeed, that he is naked, and, as 
Swift has it, 'a forked straddling animal with 
bandy legs;' yet also a Spirit, and unutterable 
Mystery of Mysteries. ' ' 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 69 



CHAPTER IX. 

ADAMITISM. 

Let no courteous reader take offense at the 
opinions broached in the conclusion of the last 
Chapter. The Editor himself, on first glanc- 
ing over that singular passage, was inclined to 
exclaim : What, have we got not only a San- 
sculottist, but an enemy to Clothes in the ab- 
stract? A new Adamite, in this century, 
which flatters itself that it is the Nineteenth, 
and destructive both to Superstition and En- 
thusiasm? 

Consider, thou foolish Teufelsdrockh, what 
benefits unspeakable all ages and sexes derive 
from Clothes. For example, when thou thy- 
self, a watery, pulpy, slobbery freshman and 
newcomer in this Planet, sattest muling and 
puking in thy nurse's arms; sucking thy coral, 
and looking forth into the world in the blank- 
est manner, what hadst thou been without thy 
blankets and bibs and other nameless hulls? A 
terror to thyself and mankind ! Or hast thou 
forgotten the day when thou first receivedest 
breeches, and thy long clothes became short? 
The village where thou livedest was all ap- 
prised of the fact ; and neighbor after neighbor 
kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave thee, as 
handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the 



70 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert 
not thou, at one period of life, a Buck, or 
Blood, or Macaroni, or Incroyable, or Dandy, 
or, by whatever name, according to year and 
place, such phenomenon is distinguished? In 
that one word lie included mysterious volumes. 
Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or 
altered, and thy clothes are not for triumph 
but for defense, hast thou always worn them 
perforce, and as a consequence of Man's Fall; 
never rejoiced in them as in a warm movable 
House, a Body round thy Body, wherein that 
strange Thee of thine sat snug, defying all 
variations of Climate? Girt with thick double- 
milled kerseys; half-buried under shawls and 
broadbrims, and overalls and mud-boots, thy 
very fingers cased in doeskin and mittens, 
thou hast bestrode that "Horse I ride;" and, 
though it were in wild winter, dashed through 
the v^rorld, glorying in it as if thou wert its 
lord. In vain did the sleet beat round thy 
temples; it lighted only on thy impenetrable, 
felted or woven, case of wool. In vain did the 
winds howl, — forests sounding and creaking, 
deep calling unto deep, — and the storms heap 
^ themselves together into one huge Arctic 
whirlpool; thou fiewest through the middle 
thereof, striking fire from the highway; wild 
music hummed in thy ears, thou, too, wert as 
a "sailor of the air;" the wreck of matter and 
the crash of worlds was thy element and pro- 
pitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, with- 
out bit or saddle, what hadst thou been ; what 
had thy fleet quadruped been? — Nature is 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 71 

good, but she is not the best : here truly was 
the victory of Art over Nature. A thunder- 
bolt, indeed, might have pierced thee ; all short 
of this thou couldst defy. 

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your 
Teufelsdrockh forgotten what he said lately 
about "Aboriginal Savages," and their "con- 
dition miserable, indeed?" Would he have all 
this unsaid; and us betake ourselves again to 
the "matted-cloak," and go sheeted in a "thick 
natural fell?" 

Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor 
knov/s full well what he is saying ; and both 
thou and we, in our haste, do him wrong. If 
Clothes, in these times, "so tailorize and de- 
moralize us," have they no redeeming value ; 
can they not be altered to serve better ; must 
they of necessity be thrown to the dogs? The 
truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculot- 
tist, is no Adamite ; and much perhaps as he 
might wish to go forth before this degenerate 
age "as a Sign," would nowise wish to do it, 
as those old Adamites did, in a state of Naked- 
ness. The utility of Clothes is altogether 
apparent to him : nay, perhaps he has an in- 
sight into their more recondite, and almoajj^ 
mystic qualities, what we might call the om-^- 
nipotent virtue of Clothes, such as was never 
before vouchsafed to any man. For example : 

"You see two individuals," he writes, "one 
dressed in fine Red, the other in coarse thread- 
bare Blue: Red says to Blue, 'Be hanged and 
anatomized:' Bme hears with a shudder, and 
(O wonder of wonders) ! marches sorrowfully 



72 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

to the gallows ; is there noosed-up, vibrates his 
hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his 
bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. 
How is this; or what make ye of your Nothing 
can act but where it is? Red has no physical 
hold of Blue, no clutch of him, is nowise in 
contact with him ; neither are those minister- 
ing Sheriffs and Lord- Lieutenants and Hang- 
men and Tipstaves so related to commanding 
Red, that he can tug them hither and thither; 
but each stands distinct within his own skin. 
Nevertheless, as it is spoken, so is it done : the 
articulated Word sets all hands in Action ; and 
Rope and Improved-drop perform their work. 

''Thinking reader, the reason seems to me 
two-fold: First, that Man is a Spirit, and 
bound by invisible bonds to All Men; sec- 
ondly, that he wears Clothes, which are the 
visible emblems of that fact. Has not your 
Red hanging-individual a horse-hair wig, 
squirrel -skins, and a plush-gown ; whereby all 
mortals know that he is a Judge? — Society, 
which the more I think of it astonishes me the 
more, is founded upon Cloth. 

"Oft^n in my atribular moods, when I read 
of pompous ceremonials, Frankfort Corona- 
tions, Royal Drawing-rooms, Levees, Cou- 
chees ; and how the ushers and macers and pur- 
sivants are all in waiting ; how Duke this is 
presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A by 
General B, and innumerable Bishops, Admir- 
als, and miscellaneous I: ;tv.). ./'es, are ad- 
vancing, gallantly to th iciated Presence; 
and I strive, in my rem^ r privacy, to form a 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 73 

clear picture of. that solemnity, — on a sudden, 
as by some enchanter's wand, the — shall I 
speak it? — the Clothes fly off the whole dra- 
matic corps; and Dukes, Grandees, Bishops, 
Generals, Anointed Presence itself, every 
mother's son of them, stand straddling there, 
not a shirt on them ; and I know not whether 
to laugh or weep. This physical or psychical 
infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, 
I have, after hesitation, thought right to pub- 
lish, for the solace of those afflicted with the 
like." 

Would to Heaven, say we, thou hadst 
thought right to keep it secret ! Who is there 
now that can read the five columns of Presen- 
tations in his Morning Newspaper without a 
shudder? Hypochondriac men, and all men 
are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should 
be more gently treated. With what readiness 
our fancy, in this shattered state of nerves, fol- 
lows out the consequences which Teufelsdrockh 
with a devilish coolness, goes on to draw: 

"What would Majesty do, could such an acci- 
dent befall in reality ; should the buttons all 
simultaneously start, and the solid wool evapo- 
rate, in very Deed, as here in Dream? Ack 
Gott! How each skulks into the nearest hid- 
ing-place; their high State Tragedy {Haupt- 
und Staats- Action) becomes a Pickleherring- 
Farce to weep at, which is the worst kind of 
Farce; the tables (according to Horace), and 
with them, the whole fabric of Government, 
Legislation, Property, Police, and Civilized 
Society, are dissolved, in wails and howls." 

6 Sartor Eesartus 



74 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Lives the man that can figure a naked Dnke 
of Windlestraw addressing a naked House of 
Lords? Imagination, choked as in mephitic 
air, recoils on itself, and will not forward with 
the picture. The Woolsack, the Ministerial, 
the Opposition Benches — infandum! infa7idwn! 
And yet why is the thing impossible? Was 
not every soul, or rather every body, of these 
Guardians of our Liberties, naked, or nearly 
so, last night ; ' 'a forked Radish with a head 
fantastically carved"? And why might he not, 
did our stern fate so order it, walk out to St. 
Stephen's, as well as into bed, in that no- 
fashion; and there, with other similar Rad- 
ishes, hold a Bed of Justice? "Solace to those 
afHicted with the like!" Unhappy Teufels- 
drockh, had man ever such a "physical or 
psychical infirmity" before? And now how 
raany, perhaps, may thy unparalleled confes- 
sion (which we, even to the sounder British 
world, and goaded-on by Critical and Bio- 
graphical duty, grudge to reimpart) incurably 
infect therewith? Art thou the malignest of 
Sansculottists, or only the maddest? 

"It will remain to be examined," adds the 
inexorable Teufelsdrockh, "in how far the 
Scarecrow, as a Clothed Person, is not also en- 
titled to benefit of clergy, and English trial by 
jury: nay, perhaps, considering his high func- 
tion (for is not he too a Defender of Property, 
and Sovereign armed with the terrors of the 
Law?), to a certain royal Immunity and Invio- 
lability; which, however, misers and the 
meaner class of persons are not always volun- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 75 

tarily disposed to grant him." . . . "O my 
Friends, we are (in Yorick Sterne's words) but 
as 'turkeys driven, with a stick and red clout, 
to the market:' or if some drivers, as they do 
in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas 
in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest!" 



76 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER X. 

PURE REASON. 

It must now be apparent enough that oui- 
Professor, as above hinted, is a speculative 
Radical, and of the very darkest tinge; 
acknowledging, for most part, in the solemni- 
ties and paraphernalia of civilized Life, which 
we make so much of, nothing but so many 
Cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and "bladders with 
dried peas." To linger among such specula- 
tions, longer than mere Science requires, a dis- 
cerning public can have no wish. For our pur- 
poses the simple fact that such a Naked World 
is possible, nay, actually exists (under the 
Clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, there- 
fore, we omit about "Kings wrestling naked 
on the green with Carmen," and the Kings^ 
being thrown: "dissect them with scalpels, " 
says Teufelsdrockh ; "the same viscera, tis- 
sues, livers, lights, and other life-tackle, are 
there : examine their spiritual mechanism ; the 
same great Need, great Greed, and little Fac- 
ulty; nay ten to one but the Carmen, who un- 
derstands draught-cattle, the rimming of 
wheels, something of the laws of unstable and 
stable equilibrium, with other branches of 
wagon-science, and has actually put forth his 
hand and operated on Nature, is the more 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 77 

cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, 
their so -unspeakable difference? From 
Clothes. " Much also we shall omit about con- 
fusion of Ranks, and Joan and My Lady, and 
how it would be everywhere "Hail fellow well 
met," and Chaos were come again: all of 
which to any one that has once fairly pictured 
out the grand mother-idea. Society in a state 
of Nakedness, will spontaneously suggest it- 
self. Should some skeptical individual still 
entertain doubts whether in a world without 
Clothes, the smallest Politeness, Polity, or 
even Police, could exist, let him turn to the 
original Volume, and view there the boundless 
Serbonian Bog of Sansculottism, stretching 
sour and pestilential: over which we have 
lightly flown ; where not only whole armies but 
whole nations might sink! If indeed the fol- 
lowing argument, in its brief riveting empha- 
sis, be not of itself incontrovertible and final : 

"Are we Opossums; have we natural 
Pouches, like the Kangaroo? Or how, without 
Clothes, could we possess the master-organ, 
soul's seat and true pineal gland of the Body 
Social: I mean a Purse?" 

Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Profes- 
sor Teufelsdrockh ; at worst, one knows not 
whether to hate or to love him. For though, 
in looking at the fair tapestry of human Life, 
with its royal and even sacred figures, he 
dwells not on the obverse alone, but here 
chiefly on the reverse ; and indeed turns out 
the rough seams, tatters, and manifold thrums 
of that unsightly wrone-side. with an almost 



78 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

diabolic patience and indifference, which must 
have sunk him in the estimation of most read- 
ers, — there is that within which unspeakably 
distinguishes him from all other past and pres- 
ent Sansculottists. The grand unparalleled 
peculiarity of Teufelsdrockh is, that with all 
this Descendentalism, he combines a Trans- 
cendentalism, no less superlative ; whereby if 
on the one hand he degrade man below most 
animals, except those jacketed Gouda Cows, 
he, on the other, exalts him beyond the visible 
Heavens, almost to an equality with the Gods. 
"To the eye of vulgar Logic," says he, 
"what is man? An omnivorous Biped that 
wears Breeches. To the eye of Pure Reason 
what is he? A Soul, a Spirit, and divine 
Apparition. Round his mysterious Me, there 
lies, under all those wool-rags, a Garment of 
Flesh (or of Senses), contextured in the Loom 
of Heaven; whereby he is revealed to his like, 
and dwells with them in Union and Division; 
and sees and fashions for himself a Universe, 
with azure Starry Spaces, and long Thousands 
of years. Deep-hidden is he under that 
strange Garment; amid Sounds and Colors 
and Forms, as it were, swathed-in, and inex- 
tricably over-shrouded : yet it is sky- woven, 
and worthy of a God. Stands he not thereby 
in the center of Immensities, in the conflux of 
Eternities? He feels: power has been given 
him to know, to believe ; nay does not the 
spirit of Love, free in its celestial primeval 
brightness, even here, though but for mo- 
ments, look through? Well said Saint Chrysos- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 79 

torn, with his lips of gold, 'the true Shekinah 
is Man:' where else is the God's-Presence 
manifested not to our eyes only, but to our 
hearts, as in our fellow-man?" 

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the 
high Platonic Mysticism of our Author, which 
is perhaps the fundamental element of his 
nature, bursts forth, as it were, in full flood: 
and, through all the vapor and tarnish of 
what is often so perverse, so mean in his ex- 
terior and environment, we seem to look into 
a whole inward Sea of Light and Love; — 
though, alas, the grim coppery clouds soon 
roll together again, and hide it from view. 

Such tendency to Mysticism is everywhere 
traceable in this man ; and indeed, to atten- 
tive readers, must have been long ago appar- 
ent. Nothing that he sees but has more than 
a common meaning, but has two meanings: 
thus, if in the highest Imperial Scepter and 
Charlemagne-Mantle, as well as in the poorest 
Ox-goad and Gypsy-Blanket, he finds Prose, 
Decay, Contemptibility; there is in each sort 
Poetry also, and a reverend Worth. For Mat- 
ter, were it never so despicable, is Spirit, the 
manifestation of Spirit: were it never so hon- 
orable, can it be more? The thing Visible, 
nay the thing Imagined, the thing in any way 
conceived as Visible, what is it but a Gar- 
ment, a Clothing of the higher, celestial Invis- 
ible, "unimaginable, formless, dark with ex- 
cess of bright?" Under which point of view 
the following passage, so strange in purport, 



80 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

SO Strange in phrase, seems characteristic 
enough : 

"The beginning of all Wisdom is to look 
fixedly on Clothes, or even with armed eye- 
sight, till they become transparent. 'The 
Philosopher,' says the wisest of this age, 'must 
station himself in the middle:' how true ! The 
Philosopher is he to whom the Highest has de- 
scended, and the Lowest has mounted up; who 
is the equal and kindly brother of all. 

Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cob- 
webs, whether woven in Arkwright looms, or 
by the silent Arachnes that weave unrestingly 
in our imagination? Or, on the other hand, 
v/hat is there that we cannot love; since all 
was created by God? 

"Happy he who can look through the 
Clothes of a man (the woolen, and fleshly, and 
official Bankpaper and State-paper Clothes) 
into the Man himself; and discern, it may be, 
in this or the other Dread Potentate, a more 
or less incompetent Digestive-apparatus; yet 
also an inscrutable venerable Mystery, in the 
meanest Tinker that sees with eyes!" ' 

For the rest as is natural to a man of this 
kind, he deals much in the feeling of Wonder; 
insists on the necessity and high worth of uni- 
versal Wonder: which he holds to be the only 
reasonable temper for the denizen of so sin- 
gular a Planet as ours. "Wonder," says he, 
"is the basis of Worship: the reign of wonder 
is perennial, indestructible in Man; only at 
certain stages (as the present), it is, for some 
short season, a reign in partibus infidelmm.'' 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 81 

That progress of science, which is to destroy 
Wonder, and in its stead substitute Mensura- 
tion and Numeration, finds small favor with 
Teufelsdrockh, much as he otherwise vener- 
ates these two latter processes. 

"Shall your Science," exclaims he, "proceed 
in the small chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, 
underground workshop of Logic alone; and 
man's mind become an Arithmetical Mill, 
whereof Memory is the Hopper, and mere 
Tables of Sines and Tangents, Codification, 
and Treatises of what you call Political Econ- 
omy, are the Meal? And what is that Science, 
which the scientific head alone, were it screwed 
off, and (like the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) 
set in a basin to keep it alive, could prosecute 
without the shadow of a heart, — but one other 
of the mechanical and menial handicrafts, for 
which the Scientific Head (having a Soul in it) 
is too noble an organ? I mean that Thought 
without Reverence is barren, perhaps poison- 
ous; at best, dies like cookery with the day 
that called it forth ; does not live, like sowing, 
in successive tilths and wider-spreading har- 
vests, bringing food and plenteous increase to 
all Time." 

In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, 
harder or softer, according to ability ; yet ever, 
as we would fain persuade ourselves, with 
charitable intent. Above all, that class of 
"Logic-choppers, and treble-pipe Scoffers, and 
professed Enemies to Wonder; who, in these 
days, so numerously patrol as night-constables 
about the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and 

6 



82 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

cackle, like true Old-Roman geese and gos- 
lings round their Capitol, on any alarm, or on 
none; nay who often, as illuminated Skeptics, 
walk abroad into peaceable society in full day- 
light with rattle and lantern, and insist on 
guiding you and guarding you therewith, 
though the Sun is shining, and the street 
populous with mere justice-loving men:" that 
whole class is inexpressibly wearisome to him. 
Hear with what uncommon animation he per- 
orates: 

"The man who cannot wonder, who does not 
habitually wonder (and worship), were he Pres- 
ident of innumerable Royal Societies, and car- 
ried the whole Mechanique Celeste and Hegel's 
Philosophy, and the epitome of all Laboratories 
and observatories with their results, . in his 
single head, — is but a Pair of Spectacles be- 
hind which there is no Eye. Let those who 
have Eyes look through him, then he may be 
useful. 

"Thou wilt have no Mystery and Mysticism; 
wilt walk through thy world by the sunshine 
of what thou callest Truth, or even by the 
hand-lamp of what I call Attorney-Logic; and 
'explain' all, 'account' for all, or believe noth- 
ing of it? Nay, thou wilt attempt laughter; 
whoso recognizes the unfathomable, all-pervad- 
ing domain of Mystery, which is everywhere 
under our feet and among our hands ; to whom 
the Universe is an oracle and Temple, as well 
as a Kitchen and Cattle-stall, — he shall be a 
delirious Mystic; to him thou, with sniffing 
charity, wilt protrusively* proffer thy hand- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 83 

lamp, and shriek, as one injured, when he 
kicks his foot through it? — Armer Teufelf 
Doth not thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gen- 
der? Thou thyself, wert thou not born, wilt 
thou not die? 'Explain' me all this, or do one 
of two things: Retire into private places with 
thy foolish cackle ; or, what were better, give 
it up, and weep, not that the reign of wonder 
is done, and God's world all dissembellished 
and prosaic, but that thou hitherto art a Dilet- 
tante and sand-blind Pedant." 



84 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER XI. 

PROSPECTIVE. 

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all read- 
ers, as we predicted it would do, unfolding it- 
self into new boundless expansions, of a cloud- 
capt, almost chimerical aspect, yet not without 
azure loomings in the far distance, and streaks 
of an Elysian brightness; the highly question- 
able purport and promise of which it is becom- 
ing more and more important for us to ascer- 
tain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries 
many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pan- 
demonian lava? Is it of a truth leading us into 
beatific Asphodel meadows, or the yellow- 
burning marl of a Hell-on-Earth? 

Our Professor, like other Mystics, whether 
delirious or inspired, gives an Editor enough 
to do. Ever higher and dizzier are the heights 
he leads us to; more piercing, all-comprehend- 
ing, all-confounding are his views and glances. 
For example, this of Nature being not an 
Aggregate but a Whole : 

"WeU sang the Hebrew Psalmist: 'If I take 
the wings of the morning and dwell in the 
uttermost parts of the universe, God is there. ' 
Thou thyself, O cultivated reader, who too 
probably art no Psalmist, but a Prosaist, know- 
ing God only by tradition, knowest thou any 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 85 

corner of the world where at least Force is not? 
The drop which thou shakest from thy wet 
hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow 
thou findest it swept away; already on the 
wings of the Northwind, it is nearing the 
Tropic of Cancer. How came it to evaporate^ 
and not lie motionless? Thinkest thou there 
is aught motionless ; without Force, and utterly 
dead? 

"As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said 
to myself: That little fire which glows star- 
like across the dark -growing {nachtende) moor, 
where the sooty smith bends over his anvil, 
and thou hopest to replace thy lost horse-shoe, 
— is it a detached, separated speck, cut-off from 
the whole Universe; or indissolubly joined to 
the whole? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was 
(primarily) kindled at the Sun; is fed by air 
that circulates from before Noah's Deluge, 
from beyond the Dogstar; therein, with Iron 
Force, and Coal Force, and the far stranger 
Force of Man, are cunning affinities and bat- 
tles and victories of Force brought about ; it is 
a little ganglion, or nervous center, in the 
great vital system of Immensity. Call it, if 
thou wilt, an unconscious Altar, kindled on the 
bosom of the All ; whose iron sacrifice, whose 
iron smoke and influence reach quite through 
the All ; whose dingy Priest, not by word, yet 
by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mys- 
tery of Force ; nay preaches forth (exoterically 
enough) one little textlet from the Gospel of 
Freedom, the Gospel of Man's Force come- 
manding, and one day to be all-commanding. 



86 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

"Detached, separated! I say there is no 
such separation: nothing hitherto was ever 
stranded, cast aside; but all, were it only a 
withered leaf, works together with all; is 
borne forward on the bottomless, shoreless 
flood of Action, and lives through perpetual 
metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead 
and lost, there are Forces in it and around it, 
though working in inverse order; else how 
could it rot? Despise not the rag from which 
man makes paper, or the litter from which the 
earth makes Corn. Rightly viewed no meanest 
object is insignificant; all objects are as win- 
dows, through which the philosophic eye looks 
into Infinitude itself." 

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald 
Smithy- Altar, what vacant, high-sailing air- 
ships are these, and whither will they sail with 
us? 

"All visible things are emblems; what thou 
seest is not there on its own account ; strictly 
taken, is not there at all: Matter exists only 
spiritually, and to represent some Idea, and 
body it forth. Hence Clothes, as despicable as 
we think them, are so unspeakably significant. 
Clothes, from the King's mantle downward, 
are emblematic not of want only, but of a man- 
ifold cunning Victory over Want, On the 
other hand, all Emblematic things are properly 
Clothes, thought woven or hand woven : must 
not the Imagination weave Garments, visible 
Bodies, wherein the else invisible creations and 
inspirations of our Reason are, like Spirits, 
revealed, and first become all-powerful ;— the 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 87 

rather if, as we often see the Hand too aid her, 
and (by Wool Clothes or otherwise) reveal 
such even to the outward eye? 

"Men are properly said to be clothed with 
Authority, clothed with Beauty, with Curses, 
and the like. Nay, if you consider it, what is 
Man himself, and his whole terrestrial Life, 
but an Emblem ; a Clothing or visible Garment 
for that divine Me of his, cast hither, like a 
light particle, down from Heaven? Thus is 
he said also to be clothed with a Body. 

"Language is called the Garment of Thought : 
however, it should rather be, Language is the 
Flesh-Garment, the Body of Thought. I said 
that Imagination wove this Flesh-Garment; 
and does not she? Metaphors are her stuff: 
examine Language ; what, if you expect some 
few primitive elements (of natural sound), 
what is it all but Metaphors, recognized as 
such, or no longer recognized; still fluid and 
florid, or now solid-grown and coloress? If 
those same primitive elements are the osseous 
fixtures in the Flesh-Garment, Language, — 
then are Metaphors its muscles and tissues 
and living integuments. An unmetaphorical 
style you shall in vain seek for : is not your very 
Attention a Stretching-to? The difference lies 
here: some styles are lean, adust, wiry, the 
muscle itself seems osseous; some are even 
quite pallid, hunger-bitten and dead-looking; 
while others again glow in the flush of health 
and vigorous self-growth, sometimes (as in my 
own case) not without an apoplectic tendency. 
Moreover, there are sham Metaphors, which 



88 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

overhanging that same Thought's-Body (best 
naked), and deceptivel}?- bedizening, or bolster- 
ing it out, may be called its false stuffings, 
superfluous show-cloaks {Putz- Mantel), and 
tawdy woolen rags : whereof he that runs and 
reads may gather whole hampers, — and burn 
them." 

Than which paragraph on Metaphors did the 
reader ever chance to see a more surprisingly 
metaphorical? However that is not our chief 
grievance; the Professor continues: 

"Why multiply instances? It is written the 
Heavens and the Earth shall fade away like a 
Vesture; which indeed they are: the Time- 
vesture of the Eternal. Whatsoever sensibly 
exists, whatsoever represents Spirit to Spirit, 
is properly a Clothing, a suit of Raiment, put 
on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus in 
this one pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly 
■understood, is included all that men have 
thought, dreamed, done, and been: the whole 
External Universe and what it holds is but 
Clothing; and the essence of all Science lies in 
the Philosophy of Clothes." 

Toward these dim infinitely - expanded 
regions, close-bordering on the impalpable 
Inane, it is not without apprehension, and per- 
petual difficulties, that the Editor sees himself 
journeying and struggling. Till lately a cheer- 
ful daystar of hope hung before him, in the 
expected Aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke ; which 
daystar, however, melts now, not into the red 
of morning, but into a vague, gray half-light, 
uncertain whether dawn of day or dusk of 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 89 

utter darkness. , For the last week, these so- 
called Biog-raphical Documents are in his hand. 
By the kindness of a Scottish Hamburg Mer- 
chant, whose name, known to the whole mer- 
cantile world, he must not mention; but 
whose honorable courtesy, now and often 
before spontaneously manifested to him, a 
mere literary stranger, he cannot soon forget, 
the bulky Weissnichtwo Packet, with all its 
Customhouse seals, foreign hieroglyphs, and 
miscellaneous tokens of Travel, arrived here 
in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader 
shall now fancy with what hot haste it was 
broken up, with what breathless expectation 
glanced over; and, alas, with what unquiet 
disappointment it has, since then, been often 
thrown down, and again taken up. 

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded 
Letter, full of compliments, Weissnichtwo 
politics, dinners, dining repartees, and other 
ephemeral trivialities, proceeded to remind us 
of what we knew well already: that however it 
may be with Metaphysics, and other abstract 
Science originating in the Head {Verstand) 
alone, no Life- Philosophy {Lebensphilosophie) , 
such as this of Clothes pretends to be, which 
originates equally in the Character {Gemuth), 
and equally speaks thereto, can attain its 
significance till the Character itself is known 
and seen; "till the Author's view of the World 
{Weltansicht), and how he actively and passively 
came by such view, are clear: in short till a 
Biographj?" of him has been philosophico-poet- 



90 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ically written, and philosophico - poetically 
read." 

"Nay," adds he, "were the speculative 
scientific Truth even known, you still, in this 
inquiring age, ask yourself. Whence came it 
and Why, and How? — and rest not, till if no 
better may be, Fancy have shaped-out an 
answer; and either in the authentic linea- 
ments of Fact, or the forged ones of Fiction, 
a complete picture and Genetical History of 
the man and his spiritual Endeavor lies before 
you. But why," says the Hofrath, and indeed 
say we, "do I dilate on the uses of our 
Teufelsdrockh's Biography? The great Herr 
Minister von Goethe has penetratingly 
remarked that 'Man is properly the only object 
that interests man;* thus I too have noted, 
that in Weissnichtwo our whole conversation 
is little or nothing else but Biography 
or Auto- Biography; ever humano-anecdotical 
{nunschlich-anekdotiscJi) . Biography is by nature 
the most universally profitable, universally 
pleasant of all things: especially Biography of 
distinguished individuals. 

"By this time, mein Verehrtester (my Most 
Esteemed)," continues he, vv^ith an eloquence 
which, unless the words be purloined from 
Teufelsdrockh, or some trick of his, as we sus- 
pect, is well-nigh unaccountable, "by this time 
you are fairly plunged {vertiefi) in that mighty 
forest of Clothes- Philosophy; and looking 
round as all readers do, with astonishment 
enough. Such portions and passages as you 
have already mastered, and brought to paper. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 91 

could not but . awaken a strange curiosity 
touching the mind they issued from; the per- 
haps unparalleled psychical mechanism, which 
manufactured such matter, and emitted it to 
the light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh also a 
father and mother; did he, at one time, w^ear 
drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat? Did he 
ever, in rapture and tears, clasp a friend's 
bosom to his; looks he also wistfully into the 
long burial-aisle of the Past, where only 
winds, and their low harsh moan, give inarti- 
culate answer? Has he fought duels; — good 
Heaven! how did he comport himself when in 
Love? By what singular stair-steps, in short, 
and subterranean passages, and sloughs of 
Despair, and steep Pisgah hills, has he reached 
this wonderful prophetic Hebron (a true Old- 
Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells? 

"To all these natural questions the voice of 
public History is as yet silent. Certain only 
that he has been, and is, a Pilgrim, and Trav- 
eler from a far Country ; more or less footsore 
and travelsoiled ; has parted with road com- 
panions; fallen among thieves, been poisoned 
by bad cookery, blistered with bugbites; never- 
theless, at every stage (for they have let him 
pass), has had the Bill to discharge. But the 
whole particulars of his Route, his Weather- 
observations, the picturesque sketches he took, 
though all regularly jotted down (in indeli- 
ble sympathetic-ink by an invisible interior 
Penman), are these nowhere forthcoming? 
Perhaps quite lost: one other leaf of that 
mighty Volume (of human Memory) left to fly 



92 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

abroad, unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, 
as waste paper; and to rot, the sport of rainy- 
winds? 

"No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber, in nowise 
I here, by the unexampled favor you stand in 
with our Sage, send not a Biography only, but 
an Auto- Biography: at least the materials for 
such; where from, if I misreckon not, your 
perspicacity will draw fullest insight: and so 
the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of 
Clothes will stand clear to the wondering eyes 
of England, nay thence, through America, 
through Hindostan, and the antipodal New 
Holland, finally conquer (ei?i?ieh?7ien) great part 
of this terrestrial Planet!" 

And now let the sympathizing reader judge 
of our feeling when, in place of this same 
Autobiography with "fullest insight," we find 
— Six considerable Paper - Bags, carefully 
sealed, and marked successively, in gilt China- 
ink with the symbols of the Six southern 
Zodiacal Signs, beginning at Libra; in the 
inside of which sealed Bags lie miscellaneous 
masses of Sheets, and oftener Shreds and 
Snips, written in Professor Teufelsdrockh's 
scarce legible cursiv-schrift ; and treating of all 
imaginable things under the Zodiac and above 
it, but of his own personal history, only at rare 
intervals, and then in the most enigmatic 
manner. 

Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Pro- 
fessor, or, as he here, speaking in the third 
person, calls himself, "the Wanderer," is not 
once named. Then again, amidst what seems 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 93 

to be a Metaphysico-theological Disquisition, 
"Detached Thoughts on the Steam-engine," or 
*'The continued Possibility of Prophecy," we 
shall meet with some quite private, not unim- 
portant Biographical fact. On certain sheets 
stand Dreams, authentic or not, while the 
circumjacent waking actions are omitted. 
Anecdotes, oftenest without date of place or 
time, fly loosely on separate slips, like Sibylline 
leaves. Interspersed also are long purely 
Autobiographical delineations; yet without 
connection, without recognizable coherence; 
so unimportant, so superfluously minute, they 
almost remind us of "P. P. Clerk of this Par- 
ish." Thus does the famine of intelligence 
alternate with waste. Selection, order, 
appears to be unknown to the Professor. In 
all Bags the same imbroglio ; only perhaps in 
the Bag Capricorn, and those near it, the con- 
fusion a little worse confounded. Close by a 
rather eloquent Oration, "On receiving the 
Doctor's-Hat, " lie wash-bills, marked bezahlt 
(settled). 

His Travels are indicated by the Street- 
Advertisements of the various cities he has 
visited; of which Street- Advertisements, in 
most living tongues, here is perhaps the com- 
pletest collection extant. 

So that if the Clothes- Volume itself was too 
like a Chaos, we have now instead of the solar - 
Luminary that should still it, the airy Limbo 
which by intermixture will farther volatalize 
and discompose it ! As we shall perhaps see it 
our duty ultimately to deposit these Six Paper- 



94 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Bags in the British Museum, farther descrip- 
tion, and all vituperation of them, may be 
spared. Biography or Autobiography of 
Teufelsdrockh there is, clearly enough, none 
to be gleaned here: at most some sketchy, 
shadowy fugitive likeness of him may, by 
unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly 
of imagination, on the side of Editor and of 
Reader, rise up between them. Only as a 
gaseous-chaotic Appendix to that aqueous- 
chaotic Volume can the contents of the Six 
Bags hover round us, and portions 
thereof be incorporated with our delineation 
of it. 

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with 
green spectacles) deciphering these unimagin- 
able Documents from their perplexed cursiv- 
schrift; collating them with the almost equally 
unimaginable Volume, which stands in legible 
print. Over such a universal medley of high 
and low, of hot, cold, moist, and dry, is he here 
struggling (by union of like with like, which 
is Method) to build a firm Bridge for British 
travelers. Never perhaps since our first 
Bridge-builders, Sin and Death, built that 
stupendous Arch from Hell-gate to the Earth, 
did any Pontifex, or Pontiff, undertake such a 
task as the present Editor. For in this Arch 
too, leading, as we humbly presume, far other- 
ward than that grand primeval one, the ma- 
terials are to be fished-up from the weltering 
deep, and down from the simmering air, here 
one mass, there another, and cunningly 
cemented, while the elements boil beneath: 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 95 

nor is there any. supernatural force to do it 
with; but simply the Diligence and feeble 
thinking Faculty of an English Editor, endeav- 
oring to evolve printed Creation out of a Ger- 
man printed and written Chaos, wherein, as he 
shoots to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, 
piecing the Why to the far-distant Wherefore, 
his whole Faculty and Self are like to be swal- . 
lowed up. 

Patiently, under these incessant toils and 
agitations, does the Editor, dismissing all anger, 
see his otherwise robust health declining; 
some fraction of his allotted natural sleep 
nightly leaving him, and little but an inflam.ed 
nervous-system to be looked for. What is the 
use of health, or of life, if not to do some work 
therewith? And what work nobler than trans- 
planting foreign Thought into the barren 
domestic soil; except indeed planting Thought 
of your own, which the fewest are privileged 
to do? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy of 
Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, 
promises to reveal newcoming Eras, the first 
dim rudiments and already-budding germs of 
a nobler Era, in Universal History. Is not 
such a prize worth some striving? Forward 
with us, courageous reader; be it toward fail- 
ure, or toward success! The latter thou 
sharest with us ; the former also is not all our 
own. 



BOOK SECOND. 



CHAPTER I. 

GENESIS. 

In a psychological point of view, it is per- 
haps questionable whether from birth and 
genealogy, how closely scrutinized soever, 
much insight is to be gained. Nevertheless, 
as in every phenomenon the Beginning re- 
mains always the most notable moment; so, 
with regard to any great man, we rest not till, 
for our scientific profit or not, the whole cir- 
cumstances of his first appearance in this 
Planet, and what manner of Public Entry he 
made, are with utmost completeness rendered 
manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes- 
Philosopher, then, be this first Chapter conse- 
crated. Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of 
quite obscure extraction; uncertain, we might 
almost say, whether of any: so that this Gen- 
esis of his can properly be nothing but an 
Exodus (or transit out of Invisibility into Visi- 
bility) ; whereof the preliminary portion is no- 
where forthcoming. 

*'In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes 
he, in the Bag Libra, on various Papers, 
which we arrange with difficulty, "dwelt 
96 




"That little fire which glows star-like." — Page 

Sartor Resartus. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 97 

Andreas Futteral arrange with difficulty, 
"dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife; child- 
less, in still seclusion, and cheerful though 
now verging toward old age. Andreas had 
been grenadier Sergeant, and even regimental 
Schoolmaster under Frederick the Great; but 
now, quitting the halbert and ferule for the 
spade and pruning-hook, cultivated a little 
Orchard, on the produce of which he, Cincin- 
natus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, 
the peach, the apple, the grape, with other 
varieties came in their season; all which 
Andreas knew how to sell: on evenings he 
smoked largely, or read (as beseemed a regi- 
mental Schoolmaster), and talked to neighbors 
that would listen about the Victory of Ross- 
bach ; and how Fritz the Only {der Einzige) had 
once with his own royal lips spoken to him. had 
been pleased to say, when Andreas as camp- 
sentinel demanded the pass- word, ' Schweig, 
Hu?id (Peace, hound)!' before any of his staff- 
adjutants could answer. ^Das 7iemt ich mir 
einen Konig, There is what I call a King,* 
would Andreas exclaim: 'but the smoke of 
Kunersdorf was still smarting his eyes. ' 

"Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desde- 
mona by the deeds rather than the looks of her 
now veteran Othello, lived not in altogether 
military subordination ; for, as Andreas said, 
'the womankind will not drill (wer kmin die 
Weiberchen dressiren) :' nevertheless she at heart 
loved him both for valor and wisdom; to her 
a Prussian grenadier Sergeant and Regiment's 
Schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero 

7 Sartor Besaitas 



98 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and Cid: what you see, yet cannot see over, 
is as good as infinite. Nay, was not Andreas 
in very deed a man of order, courage, down- 
rightness {Geradheit); that understood Busch- 
ing's Geography, had been in the victory of 
Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade 
of Hochkirch? The good Gretchen, for all 
her fretting, watched over him and hovered 
round him as only a true housemother can: 
assiduously she cooked and sewed and scoured 
for him; so that not only his old regimental 
sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole habi- 
tation and environment, where on pegs of 
honor they hung, looked ever trim and gay : 
a roomy painted Cottage, embowered in fruit- 
trees, and forest-trees, evergreens and honey- 
suckles ; rising many-colored from amid shaven 
grass-plots, flowers struggling in through the 
very windows; under its long projecting eaves 
nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles 
(to screen them from rain), and seats where, 
especially on summer nights, a King might 
have wished to sit and smoke, and call it his. 
Such a Bauergut (Copyhold) had Gretchen 
given her veteran; whose sinewy arms, and 
long-disused gardening talent, had made it 
what you saw. 

"Into this unbrageous Man's-nest, one meek 
yellow evening or dusk, when the Sun, hid- 
den indeed from terrestrial Entepfuhl, did 
nevertheless journey visible and radiant along 
the celestial Balance (Libra), it was that a 
Stranger of reverend aspect entered, and, 
with grave salutation, stood before the two 

.?-..,.f 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 99 

rather astonished housemates. He was close- 
muffied in a wide mantle; which without 
farther parley unfolding, he deposited there- 
from what seemed some Basket, overhung 
with green Persian silk; saying only: Ihr 
lieben Leute^ hier brifige ein unschatzbares Verlei- 
he?i; 7iehmt es in alter Acht, sorgfaltigst benutzt es: 
mit hohent Lolm, oder wohl mit schwere?i Zinsen^ 
wird's einst zufuckgefordert, 'Good Christian 
people, here lies for you an invaluable Loan; 
take all heed thereof, in all carefulness employ 
it: with high recompense, or else with heavy 
penalty, will it one day be required back.' 
Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell- 
like, forever memorable tone, the Stranger 
gracefully withdrew ; and before Andreas or 
his wife, gazing in expectant wonder, had time 
to fashion either question or answer, was clean 
gone. Neither out of doors could aught of 
him be seen or heard ; he had vanished in the 
thickets, in the dusk; the Orchard-gate stood 
quietly closed: the Stranger was gone once 
and always. So sudden had the whole transac- 
tion been, in the autumn stillness and twilight, 
so gentle, noiseless, that the Futterals could 
have fancied it all a trick of Imagination, or 
some visit from an authentic Spirit. Only 
that the green-silk Basket, such as neither Im- 
agination nor authentic Spirits are wont to 
carry, still stood visible and tangible on their 
little parlor- table. Toward this the astonished 
couple, now with lit candle, hastily turned 
their attention. Lifting the green veil, to see 
what invaluable it hid, they descried there, 

LrfC 



100 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

amid down and rich white wrappages, no Pitt 
Diamond or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the 
softest sleep, a little red-colored Infant! 
Beside it, lay a roll of gold Friedrichs, the 
exact amount of which was never publicly 
known; also a Taufsschein (baptismal certifi- 
cate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the 
Name was decipherable; other document or 
indication none whatever. 

"To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, 
then and always thenceforth. Nowhere in 
Entepfuhl, on the morrow or next day, did 
tidings transpire of any such figure as the 
Stranger; nor could the Traveler, who had 
passed through the neighboring Town in coach- 
and-four, be connected with this Apparition, 
except in the way of gratuitous surmise. 
Meanwhile, for Andreas and his wife, the 
grand practical problem was: What to do 
with this little sleeping red-colored Infant? 
Amid amazements and curiosities, which had 
to die away without external satisfying, they 
resolved, as in such circumstances charitable 
prudent people needs must, on nursing it, 
though with spoon-meat, into whiteness, and 
if possible into manhood. The Heavens smiled 
on their endeavor: thus has that same myste- 
rious Individual ever since had a status for 
himself in this visible Universe, some modicum 
of victual and lodging and parade-ground ; and 
now expanded in bulk, faculty and knowledge 
of good and evil, he, as Herr Diogenes Teufels- 
drockh, professes or is ready to profess, per- 
haps not altogether without effect, in the new 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 101 

University of Weissnichtwo, the new Science 
of Things in General." 

Our Philosopher declares here, as indeed we 
should think he well might, that these facts, 
first communicated, by the good Gretchen 
Futteral, in his twelfth year, "produced on the 
boyish heart and fancy a quite indelible im- 
pression. Who this reverend Personage," he 
says, "that glided into the Orchard Cottage 
when the Sun was in Libra, and then, as on 
spirit's wings, glided out again, might be? An 
inexpressible desire, full of love and of sad- 
ness, has often since struggled within me to 
shape an answer. Ever, in my distresses' and 
my loneliness, has Fantasy turned, full of 
longing (sehnsuchtsvoll)^ to that unknown 
Father, who perhaps far from me, perhaps 
near, either way invisible, might have taken 
me to his paternal bosom, there to lie screened 
from many a woe. Thou beloved Father, dost 
thou still, shut out from me only by thin pen- 
etrable curtains of earthly Space, wend to and 
fro among the crowd of the living? Or art 
thou hidden by those far thicker curtains of the 
Everlasting Night or rather of the Everlast- 
ing Day, through which my mortal eye and 
outstretched arms need not strive to reach? 
Alas, I know not, and in vain vex myself to 
know. More than once, heart-deluded, have 
I taken for thee this and the other noble-look- 
ing Stranger; and approached him wistfully, 
with infinite regard; but he too had to repel 
me, he too was not thou. 

"And yet, O Man born of Woman," cries 



102 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the Autobiographer, with one of his sudden 
whirls, '* wherein is my case peculiar? Hadst 
thou, any more than I, a Father whom thou 
knowest? The Andreas and Gretchen, or the 
Adam and Eve, who led thee into Life, and 
for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, 
whom thou namest Father and Mother; these 
were, like mine, but thy nursing-father and 
nursing-mother: thy true Beginning and 
Father is in Heaven, whom with the bodily 
eyes thou shalt never behold, but only with 
the spiritual." 

"The little green veil," added he, among 
much similar moralizing, and embroiled dis- 
coursing, "I yet keep; still more inseparably 
the Name, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh. From 
the veil can nothing be inferred: a piece of 
now quite faded Persian silk, like thousands 
of others. On the Name I have many times 
meditated and conjectured; but neither in this 
lay there any clew. That it was my unknown 
Father's name I must hesitate to believe. To 
no purpose have I searched through all the 
Herald's Books, in and without the German 
Empire, and through all manner of Sub- 
scriber-Lists {Pra?iumeranUn), Militia.-RoWs, and 
other Name-catalogues; extraordinary names 
as we have in Germany, the name Teufels- 
drockh, except as appended to my own person, 
nowhere occurs. Again, what may the unchris- 
tian rather than Christian "Diogenes," mean? 
Did that reverend Basket-bearer intend, by 
such designation, to shadow forth my future 
destiny, or his own present malign humor? 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 103 

Perhaps the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill- 
starred Parent, who like an Ostrich hadst to 
leave thy ill-starred offspring- to be hatched 
into self-support by the mere sky-influences 
of Chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a 
smooth one? Beset by Misfortune thou doubt- 
less hast been ; or indeed by the worst figure 
of Misfortune, by Mis-conduct. Often have I 
fancied how, in thy hard life-battle, thou wert 
shot at, and slung at, wounded, hand-fettered, 
hamstrung, browbeaten and bedeviled by the 
Time- Spirit {Zeitgeist) in thyself and others, 
till the good soul first given thee was seared 
into grim rage ; and thou hadst nothing for it 
but to leave in me an indignant appeal to the 
Future, and living speaking Protest against 
the Devil, as that same Spirit not of the Time 
only, but of Time itself, is well named I 
Which Appeal and Protest, may I now mod- 
estly add, was not perhaps quite lost in the 
air. 

"For indeed, as Walter Shandy often in- 
sisted, there is much, nay almost all, in Names. 
The Name is the earliest Garment you wrap 
round the earth- visiting Me ; to which it thence- 
forth cleaves, more tenaciously (for there are 
Names that have lasted nigh thirty centuries) 
than the very skin. And now from without, 
what mystic influences does it not send in- 
ward, even to the center; especially in those 
plastic first-times, when the whole soul is yet 
infantine, soft, and the invisible seedgrain will 
grow to be an all overshadowing tree! Names? 
Could I unfold the influence of Names, which 



104 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

are the most important of all Clothings, I were 
a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all 
common Speech, but Science, Poetry itself, 
is no other, if thou consider it, than a right 
Naming. Adam's first task was giving names 
to natural appearances: what is ours still but 
a continuation of the same; by the Appear- 
ances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, 
stars, or starry movements (as in Science) ; or 
(as in Poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, 
God-attributes, Gods? — In a very plain sense 
the Proverb says, Call one a thief, and he will 
steal; in an almost similar sense may we not 
perhaps say. Call one Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, 
and he will open the Philosophy of Clothes?" 
"Meanwhile, the incipient Diogenes, like 
others, all ignorant of his Why, his How or 
Whereabout, was opening his eyes to the kind 
Light; sprawling out his ten fingers and toes; 
listening, tasting, feeling; in a word, by all 
his Five Senses, still more by his Sixth Sense 
of Hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, 
spiritual, half-awakened senses, endeavoring 
daily to acquire for himself some knowledge of 
this strange Universe where he had arrived, 
be his task therein what it might. Infinite was 
his progress; thus in some fifteen months, he 
could perform the miracle of — Speech! To 
breed a fresh Soul, is it not like brooding a 
fresh (Celestial) Egg; wherein as yet all is 
formless, powerless; yet by degrees organic 
elements and fibers shoot through the watery 
albumen ; and out of vague Sensation grows 
Thought, grows Fantasy and Force, and we 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 105 

have Philosophies, Dynasties, nay, Poetries 
and Religions! 

"Young Diogenes,or rather young Gneschen, 
for by such diminutive had they in their fond- 
ness named him, traveled forward to those high 
consummations, by quick yet easy stages 
The Futterals, to avoid vain talk, and, more 
over, keep the roll of gold Friedrich's safe 
gave out that he was a grand-nephew ; the or 
phan of some sister's daughter, suddenly de 
ceased, in Andreas' distant Prussian birthland 
of whom, as of her indigent sorrowing widower, 
little enough was known at Entepfuhl. Heed 
less of all which, the Nursling took to his 
spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him 
noted as a still infant, that kept his mind 
much to himself: above all, that seldom or 
never cried. He already felt that time was 
precious; that he had other work cut out for 
him than whimpering." 

Such, after utmost painful search and colla- 
tion among these miscellaneous Paper-masses, 
is all the notice we can gather of Herr Teufels- 
drcckh's genealogy. More imperfect, more 
enigmatic it can seem to few readers than to 
us. The Professor, in whom truly we more 
and more discern ascertain satirical turn, and 
deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the 
present stands pledged in honor, so we will not 
doubt him ; but seems it not conceivable that, 
by the good **Gretchen Futteral, " or some 
other perhaps interested party, he has himself 
been deceived? Should these sheets, trans- 

8 Sartor Resartus 



106 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

lated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl Circu- 
lating Library, some cultivated native of that 
district might feel called to afford explanation. 
Nay, since Books, like invisible scouts, perme- 
ate the whole habitable globe, and Timbuctoo 
itself is not safe from British Literature, 
may not some Copy find out even the mysteri- 
ous basket-bearing Stranger, who in a state of 
extreme senility perhaps still exists; and gently 
force even him to disclose himself; to claim 
openly a son, in whom any father may feel 
pride? 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 107 



CHAPTER 11. 

IDYLLIC. 

' ' Happy season of Childhood ! ' ' exclaims Teu- 
felsdrockh: *'Kind nature, that art to all a 
bountiful mother, that visitest the poor man's 
hut with auroral radiance; and for thy Nurs- 
ling hast provided a soft swathing of Love and 
infinite Hope, wherein he waxes and slumbers, 
dance-round {Umgaukelt) by sweetest Dreams? 
If the paternal Cottage still shuts us in, its roof 
still screens us ; with a Father we have as yet 
a prophet, priest and king, and an Obedience 
that makes us free. The young spirit has 
awakened out of Eternity, and knows not what 
we mean by Time; as yet Time is no fast-hur- 
rying stream, but a sportful sunlit ocean ; years 
to the child are as ages : ah ! the secret of Vi- 
cissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and 
ceaseless down-rushing of the universal World- 
fabric, from the granite mountain to the man 
or day-moth, is yet unknown ; and in a motion- 
less Universe, we taste, what afterward in this 
quick-whirling Universe, is forever denied us, 
the balm of Rest. Sleep on, thou fair Child, 
for thy long rough journey is at hand! A lit- 
tle while, and thou, too, shalt sleep no more, 
but thy very dreams shall be mimic battles; 
thou, too, with old Arnauld, wilt have to say 



108 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

in stern patience: *Rest? Rest? Shall I not 
have all Eternity to rest in?' Celestial Ne- 
penthe ! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and 
an Alexander sack the world, he finds thee 
not ; and thou hast once fallen gently, of thy 
ow.n accord, on the eyelids, on the heart of 
every mother's child. For as yet, sleep and 
waking are one : the fair Life-garden rustles 
infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fra- 
grance, and the budding of Hope ; which bud- 
ding, if in youth, too frostnipt, it grow to 
flowers, will in manhood yield no fruit, but a 
prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which the 
fewest can find the kernel. " 

In such rose-colored light does our Profes- 
sor, as Poets are wont, look back on his child- 
hood ; the historical details of which (to say 
nothing of much other vague oratorical mat- 
ter) he accordingly dwells on within almost 
wearisome minuteness. We hear of Entepfuhl 
standing "in trustful derangement" among 
the woody slopes ; the paternal Orchard flank- 
ing it as extreme outpost from below ; the lit- 
tle Kuhbach, gushing kindly by, among beech- 
rows, through river after river, into the Donau, 
into the Black Sea, into the Atmosphere and 
Universe; and how "the brave old Linden,'' 
stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in radi- 
us, overtopping all other rows and clumps, 
towered up from the central Agora and Cam- 
pus Martius of the Village, like its Sacred 
Tree ; and now the old men sat talking under 
its shadow (Gneschen often greedily listen- 
ing), and the wearied laborers reclined, and 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 109 

the unwearied children sported, and the young 
men and maidens often danced to flute-music. 
"Glorious summer twilights," cries Teufels- 
drockh, "when the Sun, like a proud Con- 
queror and Imperial Taskmaster, turned his 
back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all 
his fire-clad bodyguard (of Prismatic Colors) ; 
and the tired brick-makers of his clay Earth 
might steal a little frolic, and those few meek 
Stars would not tell of them!" 

Then we have long details of the Wei?ilesen 
(Vintage), the Harvest-Home, Christmas, and 
so forth ; with a whole cycle of the Entepfuhl 
Children's games, differing apparently by 
mere superficial shades from those of other 
countries. Concerning all which, we shall 
here, for obvious reasons, say nothing. What 
cares the world for our as yet miniature Phi- 
losopher's achievements under that "brave old 
Linden?" Or even where is the use of such 
practical reflections as the following: "In all 
the sports of Children, were it only in their 
wanton breakages, and defacements, you shall 
discern a creative instinct {schaffenden Trieb) : 
the Mankin feels that he is a born Man, that 
his vocation is to work. The choicest present 
you can make him is a Tool ; be it knife or 
pen-gun, for construction or for destruction; 
either way it is for Work, for Change. In 
gregarious sports of skill or strength, the Boy 
trains himself to Co-operation, for war or 
peace, as governor or governed; the little 
Maid again, provident of her domestic destiny, 
takes with preference to Dolls." 



no SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Perhaps, however, we may give this anec- 
dote, considering who it is that relates it: 
"My first short-clothes were of yellow serge; 
or, rather, I should say, my first short-cloth, 
for the vesture was one and invisible, reach- 
ing from neck to ankle, a mere body with four 
limbs ; of which fashion how little could I then 
divine the architectural, how much less the 
moral significance!" 

More graceful is the following little picture r 
"On fine evenings I was wont to carry forth 
my supper (bread-crumbs boiled in milk), and 
eat it out-of-doors. On the coping of the 
Orchard-wall, which I could reach by climbing, 
or still more easily if Father Andreas would 
set-up the pruning- ladder, my porringer was 
placed; there, many a sunset, have I, looking 
at the distant western Mountains, consumed, 
not without relish, my evening meal. Those 
hues of gold and azure, that hush of World's 
expectation as Day died, were still a Hebrew 
Speech for me ; nevertheless, I was looking at 
the fair illuminated Letters, and had an eye 
for their gilding." 

With "the little one's friendship for cattle 
and poultry," we shall not much intermeddle. 
It may be that hereby he acquired a "certain 
deeper sympathy with animated Nature;" but 
when, we would' ask, saw any man, in a collec- 
tion of Biographical Documents, such a piece 
as this: "Impressive enough {bedeiituiigszwll) 
was it to hear, in early morning, the Swine- 
herd's horn; and know that so many hungry 
happy quadrupeds were, on all sides, starting 



SARTOR RESARTUS. Ill 

in hot haste to join him, for breakfast on the 
Heath. Or to see them at eventide, all march- 
ing in again, with short squeak, almost in mil- 
itary order; and each, topographically correct, 
trotting-off in succession to the right or left, 
through its own lane, to its own dwelling; till 
old Kunz, at the Village-head, now left alone, 
blew his last blast, and retired for the night. 
We are wont to love the Hog chiefly in the 
form of Ham ; yet did not these bristly thick- 
skinned beings here manifest intelligence, per- 
haps humor of character; at any rate, a touch- 
ing, trustful submissiveness to Man, — who, 
were he but a Swineherd, in darned gabar- 
dine, and leather breeches, more resembhng 
slate or discolored-tin breeches, is still the 
Hierach of this lower world?" 

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set 
that an infant of genius is quite the same as 
any other infant, only that certain surprisingly 
favorable influences accompany him through 
life, especially through childhood, and expand 
him, while others lie close-folded and continue 
dunces. Herein, say they, consists the whole 
difference between an inspired Prophet and a 
double-barreled Game-preserver; the inner 
man of the one has been fostered into gener- 
ous development; that of the other, crushed- 
down perhaps by vigor of animal digestion, 
and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or at 
best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the 
bottom of his stomach. ''With which opin- 
ion, " cries Teufelsdrockh, "I should as soon 
agree as with this other, that an acorn might, 



112 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

by favorable or unfavorable influences of soil 
and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the 
cabbage-seed into an oak. 

"Nevertheless," continues he, "I, too, 
acknowledge the all but omnipotence of early 
culture and nurture; hereby we have either a 
doddered dwarf bush, or a high-towering, 
wide-shadowing tree; either a sick yellow cab- 
bage, or an edible luxuriant green one. Of a 
truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all 
philosophers, to note down with accuracy the 
characteristic circumstances of their Educa- 
tion, what furthered, what hindered, what in 
any way modified it ; to which duty, nowadays 
so pressingfor manj^ a German Autobiographer, 
I also zealously address myself. ' ' — Thou rogue ! 
Is it by short-clothes of yellow serge, and 
swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is 
educated? And yet, as usual, it ever remains 
doubtful whether he is laughing in his sleeve 
at these Autobiographical times of ours, or 
writing from the abundance of his own fond in- 
eptitude. For he continues: "If among the 
ever-streaming currents of Sights, Hearings, 
Feelings for Pain or Pleasure, whereby, as in 
a Magic Hall, young Gneschen went about 
environed, I might venture to select and spec- 
ify, perhaps these following were also of the 
number: 

"Doubtless, as childish sports call forth In- 
tellect, Activity, so the young creature's Imag- 
ination was stirred up, and a Historical ten- 
dency given him by the narrative habits of 
Father Andreas; who, with his battle-remi- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 113 

niscences, and gray austere yet hearty patriar- 
chal aspect, could not but appear another 
Ulysses and 'much-enduring Man.* Eagerly 
I hung upon his tales, when listening neigh- 
bors enlivened the hearth; from these perils 
and these travels, wild and far almost as Hades 
itself, a dim world of Adventure expanded 
itself within me. Incalculable also was the 
knowledge I acquired in standing by the Old 
Men under the Linden-tree ; the whole of Im- 
mensity was yet new to me ; and had not these 
reverend seniors, talkative enough, been em- 
ployed in partial surveys thereof for nigh four- 
score years? With amazement I began to dis- 
cover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a 
Country, of a World ; that there was such a 
thing as History, as Biography; to which I 
also, one day, by hand and tongue, might con- 
tribute. 

" In a like sense worked the Postwagen (Stage- 
coach), which, slow-rolling under its mountains 
of men and luggage, wended through our Vil- 
lage: northward, truly, in the dead of night; 
yet southward visibly at eventide. Not till 
my eighth year did I reflect that this Post- 
zvagen could be other than some terrestrial 
Moon, rising and setting by mere Law of Na- 
ture, like the heavenly one: that it came on 
made highways, from far cities toward far 
cities ; w^eaving them like a monstrous shuttle 
in closer and closer union. It was then that, in- 
dependently of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, I made 
this not quite insignificant reflection (so true 
also in spiritual things) : Any road, this simple 



114 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Entepfuhl road, will lead you to the end of the 
World! 

"Why mention our Swallows, which, out of 
far Africa, as I learned, threading their way 
over seas and mountains, corporate cities and 
belligerent nations, yearly found themselves, 
with the month of May, snug-lodged in our 
Cottage Lobby? The hospitable Father (for 
cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket 
plumb under their nest: there they built, and 
caught flies, and twittered and bred; and all, 
I chiefly, from the heart loved them. Bright, 
nimble creatures, who taught you the mason- 
craft ; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic 
incorporation, almost social police? For if, by 
ill chance, and when time pressed, your House 
fell, have I not seen five neighborly Helpers 
appear next day; and swashing to and fro, 
with animated, loud, long-drawn chirpings, 
and activity almost superhirundine, complete 
it again before nightfall? 

"But undoubtedly the grand summary of 
Entepfuhl child 's-culture, where as in a funnel 
its manifold influences were concentrated and 
simultaneously poured down on us, was the 
annual Cattle-fair, Here, assembling from all 
the four winds, came the elements of an un- 
speakable hurly-burly. Nut-brown maids and 
nut-brown men, all clear-washed, loud-laugh- 
ing, bedizened and beribboned; who came for 
dancing, for treating, and, if possible, for hap- 
piness. Topbooted Graziers from the North ; 
Swiss Brokers, Italian Drovers, also topbooted, 
from the South; these with their subalterns in 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 115 

leather jerkins, leather skull-caps, and long 
oxgoads; shouting in half-articulate speech, 
amid the inarticulate barking and bellowing. 
Apart stood Potters from far Saxony, with their 
crockery in fair rows; Nurnberg Pedlers, in 
booths that to me seemed richer than Ormuz 
bazaars; Showmen from the Lago Maggiore; 
detachments of the Wiener Schub (Offscourings 
of Vienna) vociferously superintending games 
of chance. Ballad-singers brayed. Auctioneers 
grew hoarse; cheap New Wine {Jieuriger) 
flowed like water, still worse confounding the 
confusion ; and high over all, vaulted, in 
ground-and-lofty tumbling, a particolored 
Merry-Andrew, like the genius of the place 
and of Life itself. 

"Thus encircled by the mystery of Exist- 
ence; under the deep heavenly Firmament; 
waited on by the four golden Seasons, with 
their vicissitudes of contribution, for even 
grim Winter brought its skating-matches and 
shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christ- 
mas-carols — did the Child sit and learn. These 
things were the Alphabet, whereby in after- 
time he was to syllable and partly read the 
grand Volume of the World: what matters it 
whether such Alphabet be in large gilt letters 
or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to 
read it? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the 
very act of looking thereon was a blessedness 
that gilded all: his existence was a bright, 
soft element of Joy ; out of which, as in Pros- 
pero's Island, w^onder after wonder bodied- 
itself forth, to teach by charming. 



116 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

"Nevertheless, I were but a vain dreamer to 
say, that even then my felicity was perfect. I 
had, once for all, come down from Heaven 
into the Earth. Among the rainbow colors that 
glowed on my horizon, lay even in childhood 
a dark ring of Care, as yet no thicker than a 
thread, and often quite overshone ; yet always 
it reappeared, nay, ever waxing broader and 
broader; till in after-years it almost overshad- 
owed my whole canopy, and threatened to in- 
gulf me in final night. It was the ring of Ne- 
cessity whereby we are all begirt ; happy he 
for whom a kind heavenly Sun brightens it 
into a ring of Duty, and plays round it with 
beautiful prismatic diffractions; yet ever, as 
basis and as bourn for our whole being, it is 
there. 

"For the first few years of our terrestrial 
Apprenticeship, we have not much work to do; 
but, boarded and lodged gratis, are set down 
mostly to look about us over the workshop, 
and see others work, till we have understood 
the tools a little, and can handle this and that. 
If good Passivity alone, and not good Passivity 
and good Activity together, were the thing 
wanted, then was my early position favorable 
beyond the most. In all that respects open- 
ness of Sense, affectionate Temper, ingenuous 
Curiosity, and the fostering of these, what more 
could I have v/ished? On the other side, how- 
ever, things went not so well. My Active 
Power ( Thatkraft) was unfavorably hemmed-in ; 
of which misfortune how many traces yet abide 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 117 

with me). In an orderly house, where the lit- 
ter of children's sports is hateful enough, your 
training is too stoical ; rather to bear and for- 
bear than to make and do. I was forbid much : 
wishes in any measure hold I had to renounce; 
everywhere a strait bond of Obedience inflex- 
ibly held me down. Thus already Freewill 
often came in painful collision with Necessity ; 
so that my tears flowed, and at seasons the 
Child itself might taste that root of bitterness, 
wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is 
mingled and tempered. 

"In which habituation to Obedience, truly, it 
was beyond measure safer to err by excess than 
by defect. Obedience is our universal duty 
and destiny, wherein whoso will not bend must 
break : too early and too thoroughly we cannot 
be trained to know that Would, in this world 
of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and for most 
part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. 
Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly 
Discretion, nay of Morality itself. Let me not 
quarrel with my upbringing. It was rigorous, 
too frugal, compressively secluded, every way 
unscientific; yet in that very strictness and 
domestic solitude might there not lie the root 
of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which 
all noble fruit must grow? Above all, how 
unskilled soever, it was loving, it was well- 
meant, honest; whereby every deficiency was 
helped. My kind Mother, for as such I must 
ever love the good Gretchen, did me one alto- 
gether invaluable service: she taught me, less 
indeed by word than by act and daily reverent 



118 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

look and habitude, her own simple version of 
the Christian Faith. Andreas, too, attended 
Church; yet more like a parade-duty, for 
which he in the other world expected pay with 
arrears, — as, I trust, he has received; but my 
Mother, with a true woman's heart, and fine 
though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest 
acceptation Religious. How indestructibly the 
Good grows, and propagates itself, even among 
the weedy entanglements of Evil! The high- 
est whom I knew on Earth I here saw bowed 
down, with awe unspeakable, before a Higher 
in Heaven: such things, especially in infancy, 
reach inward to the very core of your being; 
mysteriously does a Holy of Holies build itself 
into visibility in the mysterious deeps; and 
Reverence, the divinest in man, springs forth 
undying from its mean envelopment of Fear. 
Wouldst thou rather be a peasant's son that 
knew, were it never so rudely, there was a 
God in Heaven and in Man; or a duke's son 
that only knew there were two-and-thirty quar- 
ters on the family-coach?" 

To which last question we must answer: 
Beware, O Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride! 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 119 



CHAPTER III. 

PEDAGOGY. 

Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his in- 
divisible case of yellow serge, borne forward 
mostly on the arms of Kind Nature alone; 
seated, indeed, and much to his mind, in the 
terrestrial workshop, but (except his soft hazel 
eyes, which we doubt not already gleamed 
with a still intelligence) called upon for little 
voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accord- 
ingly, his aspect is rather generic, that of an 
incipient Philosopher and Poet in the abstract ; 
perhaps it would puzzle Herr Heuschrecke 
himself to say wherein the special Doc- 
trine of Clothes is as yet foreshadowed or be- 
tokened. For with Gneschen, as with others, 
the Man may indeed stand pictured in the Boy 
(at least all the pigments are there) ; yet only 
some half of the Man stands in the Child, or 
young Boy, namely, his Passive endowment, 
not his Active. The more impatient are we 
to discover what figure he cuts in this latter 
capacity ; how, when to use his own words, 
*'he understands the tools a little, and can 
handle this or that," he will proceed to handle 
it. 

Here, however, may be the place to state 
that, in much of our Philosopher's history, 



120 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

there is something of an almost Hindoo char- 
acter: nay perhaps in that so well-fostered and 
everyway excellent "Passivity" of his, which, 
with no free development of the antagonistic 
Activity, distinguished his childhood, we may 
detect the rudiments of much that, in after 
days, and still in these present days, astonishes 
the world. For the shallow-sighted, Teufels- 
drockh is oftenest a man without Activity of 
any kind, a No-man; for the deep-sighted, 
again, a man with Activity almost superabun- 
dant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, 
that no mortal can foresee its explosions, or 
even when it has exploded, so much as ascer- 
tain its significance. A dangerous, difficult 
temper for the modern European ; above all, 
disadvantageous in the hero of a Biography! 
Now as heretofore it will behove the Editor of 
these pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, 
to do his endeavor. 

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy 
v/hich a man, especially a man of letters, gets 
to handle, are his Class-books. On this por- 
tion of his history, Teufelsdrockh looks downf 
professedly as indifferent. Reading he "can- 
not remember ever to have learned;" so per- 
haps had it by nature. He says generally: 
"Of the insignificant portion of my Education, 
which depended on Schools, there need almost 
no notice be taken. I learned what others 
learn; and kept it stored-by in a corner of my 
head, seeing as yet no manner of use in it. 
My Schoolmaster, a downbent, broken-hearted, 
underfoot martyr, as others of that guild are, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 121 

did little for me, except discover that he could 
do little: he, good soul, pronounced me a gen- 
ius, fit for the learned professions ; and that I 
must be sent to the Gymnasium, and one day 
to the University. Meanwhile, what printed 
thing soever I could meet with I read. My 
very copper pocket-money I laid-out on stall- 
literature ; which, as it accumulated, I with my 
own hands sewed into volumes. By this means 
was the young head furnished with a consid- 
erable miscellany of things and shadows of 
things; History of authentic fragments lay 
mingled with Fabulous chimeras, wherein also 
was reality; and the whole not as dead stuff, 
but as living pabulem, tolerably nutritive for 
a mind as yet so peptic." 

That the Entepfuhl Schoolmaster judged 
well, we now know. Indeed, already in the 
youthful Gneschen, with all his outward still- 
ness, there may have been manifest an inward 
vivacity that promised much ; symptoms of a 
spirit singularly open, thoughtful, almost 
poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his Suppers 
on the Orchard-wall, and other phenomena of 
that earlier period, have many readers of these 
pages stumbled, in their tv/elfth year on such 
reflections as the following? "It struck me 
much, as I sat by the Kuhbach, one silent 
noontide, and watched it flowing, gurgling, 
to think how this same streamlet had flowed 
and gurgled through all changes of weather 
and fortune, from beyond the earliest date of 
History. Yes, probably on the morning when 
Joshua forded Jordan ; even as at the midday 



122 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

when Caesar, doubtless with difficulty, swam 
the Nile, yet kept his Commentaries dry, — 
this little Kuhbach, assiduous as Tiber, Euor- 
tas or Siloa, was murmuring on across the wil- 
derness, as ye unnamed, unseen : here, too, as 
in the Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or 
veinlet of the grand World-circulation of 
Waters, which, with its atmospheric arteries, 
has lasted and lasts simply with the world. 
Thou fool ! Nature alone is antique, and the 
oldest art a mushroom ; that idle crag thou sit- 
test on is six-thousand years of age. ' ' In which 
little thought, as in a little fountian, may there 
not lie the beginning of those well-nigh unut- 
terable meditations on the grandeur and mys- 
tery of Time, and its relation to Eternity, 
which play such a part in this Philosophy of 
Clothes? 

Over his Gymnastic and Academic years the 
Professor by no means lingers so lyrical and 
joyful as over his childhood. Green sunny 
tracts there are still ; but intersected by bitter 
rivulets of tears, here and there stagnating 
into sour marshes of discontent. "With my 
first view of the Hinterschlag Gymnasium," 
writes he, "my evil days began. Well do I 
still remember the red sunny Whitsuntide 
morning, when, trotting full of hope by the 
side of Father Andreas, I entered the main 
street of the place, and saw its steeple-clock 
(then striking Eight) and Schuldthurm (Jail), 
and the aproned or disaproned Burghers mov- 
ing-in to breakfast: a little dog, in mad terror, 
was rushing past; for some human imps had 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 123 

tied a tin-kettle to its tail ; thus did the agon- 
ized creature, loud-jingling, career through the 
whole length of the Borough, and become 
notable enough. Fit emblem of many a Con- 
quering Hero, to whom Fate (wedding Fan- 
tasy to Sense, as it often elsev/here does) has 
malignantly appended a tin-kettle of Ambi- 
tion, to chase him on; which the faster he 
runs, urges him the faster, the more loudly and 
more foolishly! Fit emblem also of much 
that awaited myself, in that mischievous Den ; 
as in the World, whereof it was a portion and 
epitome ! 

"Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl 
were hidden in the distance: I was among 
strangers, harshly, at best indifferently, dis- 
posed toward me ; the young heart felt, for the 
first time, quite orphaned and alone." His 
school-fellows, as is usual, persecuted him: 
' ' They were Boys, ' ' he says, ' ' mostly rude Boys, 
and obeyed the impulse of rude Nature, which 
bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, 
the duck-flock put to death any broken-winged 
brother or sister, and on all hands the strong tyr- 
annize over the weak. " He admits, that though 
"perhaps in an unusual degree morally coura- 
geous, he succeeded ill in battle, and would 
fain have avoided it ; a result, as would appear, 
owing less to his small personal stature (for in 
passionate seasons he was "incredibly nim- 
ble"), than to his "virtuous principles:" "if it 
was disgraceful to be beaten," says he, "it was 
only a shade less disgraceful to have so much 
as fought ; thus was I drawn two ways at once, 



124 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and in this important element of school-history, 
the war-element, had little but sorrow." On 
the whole, that same excellent "Passivity," so 
notable in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, is here 
visibly enough again getting nourishment. 
"He wept often; indeed to such a degree that 
he was nicknamed Der Weinende (the Tearful), 
which epithet, till toward his thirteenth year, 
was indeed not quite unmerited. Only at rare 
intervals did the young soul burst forth into 
fire-eyed rage, and, with a stormfulness [Un- 
gestum) under which the boldest quailed, assert 
that he too had Rights of Man, or at least of 
Mankin. " In all which, who does not discern 
a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of 
genius) nigh choked among pumpkins, reed- 
grass and ignoble shrubs; and forced if it 
would live, to struggle upward only, and not 
outward; into a height quite sickly, and dis- 
proportioned to its breadth). 

We find, m.oreover, that his Greek and Latin 
were "mechanically" taught; Hebrew scarce 
even mechanically: much else which they 
called History, Cosmography, Philosophy, and 
so forth, no better than not at all. So that, 
except inasmuch as Nature was still busy; and 
he himself ' ' went about, as was of old his wont, 
among the Craftsmen's workshops, there learn- 
ing many things;" and farther lighted on some 
small store of curious reading, in Hans 
Watchel the Cooper's house, where he lodged, 
■ — his time, it would appear, was utterly wasted. 
Which facts the Professor has not yet learned 
to look upon with any contentment. Indeed, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 125 

throughout the whole of this Bag Scorpio, 
where w^e now are, and often in the following 
Bag, he shows himself unusually animated on 
the matter of Education, and not without some 
touch of what we might presume to be a.nger. 

"My teachers, " says he, "were hide-bound 
Pedants, without knowledge of man's nature, 
or of boy's; or of aught save their lexicons and 
quarterly account-books. Innumerable dead 
Vocables (no dead Language, for they them- 
selves knew no Language) they crammed into 
us, and called it fostering the growth of mind. 
How can an inanimate, mechanical Gerund- 
grinder, the like of whom will, in a subse- 
quent century, be manufactured at Niirnberg 
out of wood and leather, foster the growth of 
anything; much more of Mind, which grows, 
not like a vegetable (by having its roots lit- 
tered with etymological compost), but like a 
spirit, by mysterious contact of Spirit; 
Thought kindling itself at the fire of living 
Thought? How shall he give kindling, in 
whose own inward man there is no live coal, 
but all is burnt-out to a dead grammatical cin- 
der? The Hinterschlag Professors knew syn- 
tax enough ; and of the human soul thus much : 
that it had a faculty called Memory, and could 
be acted on through the muscular integument 
by appliance of birch-rods. 

"Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever 
be ; till the Hodman is discharged, or reduced 
to hodbearing ; and an Architect is hired, and 
on all hands fitly encouraged: till communities 
and individuals discover, not without surprise, 



126 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

that fashioning the souls of a generation by 
Knowledge can rank on a level with blowing 
their bodies to pieces by Gunpowder ; that with 
Generals and Fieldmarshals, for killing, there 
should be world-honored Dignitaries, and were 
it possible, true God-ordained Priests, for 
teaching. But as yet, though the Soldier wears 
openly, and even parades, his butchering-tool, 
nowhere, far as I have traveled, did the school- 
master make show of his instructing-tool : nay, 
were he to walk abroad with birch girt on 
thigh, as if he therefrom expected honor, would 
there not, among the idler class, perhaps a 
certain levity be excited?" 

In the third year of this Gymnasic period, 
Father Andreas seems to have died: the youngs 
Scholar, otherwise so maltreated, saw himself 
for the first time clad outwardly in sables, and 
inwardly in quite inexpressible melancholy. 
"The dark bottomless Abyss, that lies under 
our feet, had yawned open ; the pale kingdoms 
of Death, with all their innumerable silent 
nations and generations, stood before him; the 
inexorable word. Never! now first showed its 
meaning. My Mother wept, and her sorrow 
got vent ; but in my heart there lay a whole 
lake of tears, pent up in silent desolation. 
Nevertheless the unworn Spirit is strong; Life 
is so healthful that it even finds nourishment 
in Death: these stern experiences, planted 
down by Memory in my Imagination, rose there 
to a whole cypress-forest, sad but beautiful; 
waving with not unmelodious sighs, in dark 
luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 127 

long years of youth: — as in manhood also it 
does, and will do; for I have now pitched my 
tent under a cypress-tree ; the Tomb is now my 
inexpugnable Fortress, ever close by the gate 
of which I look upon the hostile armaments, 
and pains and penalties of tyrannous Life plac- 
idly enough, and listen to its loudest threaten- 
ings with a still smile. O ye loved ones, that 
already sleep in the noiseless Bed of Rest, 
whom in life I could only weep for and never 
help; and 5^6, who wide-scattered still toil 
lonely in the monster-bearing Desert, dyeing 
the flinty ground with your blood, — yet a little 
while, and we shall all meet there, and our 
Mother's bosom will screen us all; and 
Oppression's harness, and Sorrov/'s firewhip, 
and all the Gehenna Bailiffs that patrol and in- 
habit ever-vexed Time, cannot thenceforth 
harm us any more!" 

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe, 
lies a labored Character of the deceased 
Andreas Futteral ; of his natural ability, his 
deserts in life (as Prussian Sergeant) ; with 
long historical inquiries into the genealogy of 
the Futteral Family, here traced back as far 
as Henry the Fowler; the whole of which we 
pass over, not without astonishment. It only 
concerns us to add, that now was the time 
when Mother Gretchen revealed to her foster- 
son that he was not at all of this kindred; or 
indeed of any kindred, having come into histor- 
ical existence in the way already known to us. 
*'Thus was I doubly orphaned," says he; *'be- 
reft not only of Possession, but even of Re- 



128 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

membrance. Sorrow and Wonder, here sud- 
denly united, could not but produce abundant 
fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, 
struck its roots through my whole nature ; ever 
till the years of mature manhood, it mingled 
with my whole thoughts, was as the stem 
whereon all my day-dreams and night-dreams 
grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet also a 
corresponding civic depression, it naturally im- 
parted: I was like no other; in which fixed 
idea, leading sometimes to highest, and oftener 
to frightfullest results, may there not lie the 
first spring of tendencies, which in my Life 
have become remarkable enough! As in 
birth, so in action, speculation, and social posi- 
tion, my fellows are perhaps not numerous.'* 

In the Bag Sagittarius, as we at length dis- 
cover, Teufelsdrockh has become a University 
man; though how, when, or of what quality, 
will nowhere disclose itself with the smallest 
certainty. Few things, in the way of confu- 
sion and capricious indistinctness, can now sur- 
prise our readers; not even the total want of 
dates, almost without parallel in a Biographical 
work. So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always 
found, and must always look to find, these scat- 
tered Leaves. In Sagittarius, however, Teufels- 
drockh begins to show himself even more than 
usually Sibylline ; fragments of all sorts ; scraps 
of regular Memoir, College Exercises, Pro- 
grammes, Professional Testimoniums, Milk- 
scores, town Billets, sometimes to appearance 
of an amatory cast ; all blown together as if by 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 129 

merest chance, henceforth bewilder the same 
Historian. To combine any picture of these 
University and the subsequent, years; much 
more, to decipher therein any illustrative pri- 
mordial elements of the Clothes-Philosophy, 
becomes such a problem as the reader may 
imagine. 

So much we can see ; darkly, as through the 
foliage of some wavering thicket: a youth of 
no common endowment, w^ho has passed hap- 
pily through Childhood, less happily yet still 
vigorously through Boyhood, now at length 
perfect in "dead vocables," and set down, as 
he hopes, by the living Fountain, there to 
superadd Ideas and Capabilities. From such 
Fountain he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet 
never or seldom with his whole heart, for the 
water nowise suits his palate ; discouragements, 
entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or 
supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary 
distresses wanting; for "the good Gretchen, 
who in spite of advices from not disinterested 
relatives has sent him hither, must after a time 
withdraw her willing but too feeble hand," 
Nevertheless in an atmosphere of Poverty and 
manifold Chagrin, the Humor of that young 
Soul, what character is in him, first decisively 
reveals itself; and, like strong sunshine in 
weeping skies, gives out variety of colors, some 
of which are prismatic. Thus, with the aid of 
Time and of what Time brings, has the strip- 
ling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh waxed into manly 
stature; and into so questionable an aspect, 
that we ask with new eagerness, How he 

9 Sartor Resartus 



130 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Specially came by it, and regret anew that there 
is more explicit answer. Certain of the intel- 
ligible and partially significant fragments, 
which are few in number, shall be extracted 
from that Limbo of a Paper-bag and presented 
with the usual preparation. 

As if, in the Bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had 
not already expectorated his antipedagogic 
spleen; as if, from the name Sagittarius, he 
had thought himself called upon to shoot 
arrows, we here again fall in with such matter 
as this: "The University where I was educated 
still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, 
and I know its name well ; which name, how- 
ever, I, from tenderness to existing interests 
and persons, shall in nowise divulge. It is my 
painful duty to say that, out of England and 
Spain, ours was the worst of all hitherto dis- 
covered Universities. This is indeed a time 
when right Education is, as nearly as may be, 
impossible : however, in degrees of wrongness 
there is no limit: nay, I can conceive a worse 
system than that of the nameless itself; as 
poisoned victual may be worse than absolute 
hunger. 

"It is written, When the blind lead the blind, 
both shall fall into the ditch; wherefore, in 
such circumstances, may it not sometimes be 
safer, if both leader and led simply — sit still? 
Had you, anywhere in Crim Tartary, walled- 
in a square enclosure; furnished it with a 
small, ill-chosen Library; and then turned 
loose into it eleven-hundred Christian strip- 
lings, to tumble about as they listed, from 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 131 

three to seven years: certain persons, undet 
the title of Professors, being stationed at the 
gates, to declare aloud that it was a University, 
and exact considerable admission-fees, — you 
had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in 
spirit and result, some imperfect resemblance 
of our High SemJnary. I say, imperfect; for 
if our mechanical structure was quite other, so 
neither was our result altogether the same: 
unhappily, we were not in Crim Tartary, but 
in a corrupt European city, full of smoke and 
sin; moreover, in the middle of a Public, 
which, without far costlier apparatus than that 
of the Square Enclosure, and Declaration 
aloud, you could not be sure of gulling. 

"Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all 
Publics are; and gulled, with the most sur- 
prising profit. Toward anything like a Sta- 
tistics of Imposture, indeed, little as yet has 
been done: with a strange indifference, our 
Economists, nigh buried under Tables for 
minor Branches of Industry, have altogether 
overlooked the grand all-overtopping Hy- 
pocrisy Branch ; as if our whole arts of Puffery, 
of Quackery, Priestcraft, Kingcraft, and the 
innumerable other crafts and mysteries of that 
genius, had not ranked in Productive Industry 
at all! Can any one, for example, so much as 
say, What mone5^s, in Literature and Shoe- 
blacking, are realized by actual Instruction 
and actual jet Polish ; what by fictitious-per- 
suasive Proclamation of such; specifying, in 
distinct items, the distributions, circulations, 
disbursements, incomings of said moneys, with 



132 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the smallest approach to accuracy? But to ask, 
How far, in all the several infinitely-com- 
plected departments of social business, in 
g-overnment, education, in manual, commer- 
cial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, 
man's Want is supplied by true Ware; how far 
by the mere Appearance of true Ware: — in 
other words, To what extent, by what methods 
with what effects, in various times and coun- 
tries, Deception takes the place of wages of 
Performance : here truly is an Inquiry big with 
results for the future time, but to which hith- 
erto only the vaguest answer can be given. 
If for the present, in our Europe, we estimate 
the ratio of Ware to Appearance of Ware o 
high even as at One to a Hundred (which, con- 
sidering the Wages of a Pope, Russian Auto- 
crat, or English Game-Preserver, is probably 
not far from the mark), — what almost prodi- 
gious saving may these not be anticipated, as 
the Statistics of Imposture advances, and so the 
manufacturing of Shams (that of Realities 
rising into clearer and clearer distinction there- 
from) gradually declines, and at length be- 
comes all but wholly unnecessary ! 

"This for the coming golden ages. What I 
had to remark, for the present brazen one, is, 
that in several provinces, as in Education, 
Polit}^, Religion, where so much is wanted and 
indispensable, and so little can as yet be fur- 
nished, probably Imposture is of sanative, 
anodyne nature, and man's Gullibility not his 
worst blessing. Suppose your sinews of war 
quite broken ; I mean your military chest insol- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 133 

vent, forage all but exhausted ; and that the 
whole army is about to mutiny, disband, and cut 
your and each other's throat, — then were it not 
well could you, as if by miracle, pay them in 
any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagu- 
lated water, or mere imagination of meat; 
whereby, till the real supply came up, they 
might be kept together and quiet? Such per- 
haps was the aim of Nature, who does nothing 
without aim, in furnishing her favorite, Man, 
with this his so omnipotent or rather omnipa- 
tient Talent of being Gulled. 

"How beautifully it works, with a little 
mechanism; nay, almost makes mechanism 
for itself! These Professors in the Nameless 
lived with ease, with safety, by a mere Repu- 
tation, constructed in past times, and then too 
with no great effort, by quite another class of 
persons. Which Reputation, like a strong, 
brisk-going undershot wheel, sunk into the 
general current, bade fair, with only a little 
annual repainting on their part, to hold long 
together, and of its own accord assiduously 
grind for them. Happy that it was so, for the 
Millers ! They themselves needed not to work ; 
their attempts at working, at what they 
called Educating, now when I look back on 
it, fill me with a certain mute admiration. 

"Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a 
Rational University; in the highest degree 
hostile to Mysticism; t.hus was the young 
vacant mind furnished with much talk about 
Progress of the Species, Dark Ages, Prejudice, 
and the like ; so that all were quickly enough 



134 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

blown out into a state of windy argumenta- 
tiveness; whereby the better sort had soon to 
end in sick, impotent Skepticism; the worser 
sort explode [crepireii) in finished Self-conceit, 
and to all spiritual intents become dead. — But 
this too is portion of mankind's lot. If our 
era is the Era of Unbelief, why murmur under 
it; is there not a better coming, nay come? 
As in long-drawn systole and long-drawn 
diastole, must the period of Faith alternate 
with the period of Denial: must the vernal 
growth, the summer luxuriance of all Opin- 
ions, Spiritual Representations and Creations, 
be followed by, and again follow, the autum- 
nal decay, the winter dissolution. For man 
lives in Time, has his whole earthly being, 
endeavor and destiny shaped for him by Time : 
only in the transitory Time-Symbol is the 
ever-motionless Eternity we stand on made 
manifest. And yet, in such winter-seasons 
of Denial, it is for the nobler-minded perhaps 
a comparative misery to have been born, and 
to be awake and work ; and for the duller a 
felicity, if, like hibernating animals, safe- 
lodged in some Salamanca University, or Syb- 
aris City, other superstitious or voluptuous 
Castle of Indolence, they can slumber-through, 
in stupid dreams, and only awaken when the 
loud-roaring hailstorms have all done their 
work, and to our prayers and martyrdoms the 
new Spring has been vouchsafed. " 

That is the environment, here mysteriously 
enough shadowed forth, Teufelsdrockh must 
have felt ill at ease, cannot be doubtful. "The 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 135 

htmg-ry young-," he says, "looked up to their 
spiritual Nurses; and, for food, were bidden 
eat the east-wind. What vain jargon of con- 
troversial Metaphysic, Etymology, and me- 
chanical Manipulation falsely named Science, 
was current there, I indeed learned, better 
perhaps than the most. Among eleven-hun- 
dred Christian youths, there will not be want- 
ing some eleven eager to learn. By collision 
with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish 
was communicated; by instinct and happy 
accident, I took less to rioting {re?tommiren) ^ 
than to thinking and reading, which latter also 
I was free to do. Nay from the chaos of that 
Library, I succeeded in fishing-up more books 
perhaps than had been known to the very 
keepers thereof. The foundation of a Liter- 
ary Life was hereby laid: I learned, on my 
own strength, to read fluently in almost all cul- 
tivated languages, on almost all subjects and 
sciences: farther, as man is ever the prime 
object to man, already it was my favorite 
employment to read character in speculation, 
and from the Writing to construe the Writer. 
A certain ground-plan of Human Nature and 
Life began to fashion itself in me; wondrous 
enough, now when I look back on it; for my 
whole Universe, physical and spiritual, was as 
yet a Machine! However, such a conscious, 
recognized ground-plan, the truest I had, was 
beginning to be there, and by additional 
experiments might be corrected and indefi- 
nitely extended." 

Thus from poverty does the strong educe 



136 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nobler wealth ; thus in the destitution of the 
wild desert does our young Ishmael acquire for 
himself the highest of all possessions, that of 
Self-help. Nevertheless a desert this was, 
waste, and howling with savage monsters. 
Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his 
"fever-paroxysms of Doubt;" his Inquiries 
concerning Miracles, and the Evidences of 
religious Faith; and how "in the silent night- 
watches, still darker in his heart than over sky 
and earth, he has cast himself before the All- 
seeing, and with audible prayers cried vehe- 
mently for Light, for deliverance from Death 
and the Grave, Not till after long years, and 
unspeakable agonies, did the believing heart 
surrender; sink into spell-bound sleep, under 
the nightmare, Unbelief; and, in this hag- 
ridden dream, mistake God's fair living world 
for a pallid, vacant Hades and extinct Pan- 
demonium. But through such Purgatory 
pain," continues he, "it is appointed us to 
pass; first must the dead Letter of Religion 
own itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, 
if the living Spirit of Religion, freed from this 
its charnel-house, is to arise on us, newborn of 
Heaven, and with new healing under its 
wings." 

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe 
enough, if we add a liberal measure of Earthly 
distresses, want of practical guidance, want 
of sympathy, want of money, want of hope; 
and all this in the fervid season of youth, so 
exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in 
desires, yet here so poor in means, — do we not 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 137 

see a strong incipient spirit oppressed and 
overloaded from without and from within ; the 
fire of genius struggling up among fuel- wood 
of the greenest, and as yet with more of bitter 
viper than of clear flame? 

From various fragments of Letters and other 
documentary scraps, it is to be inferred that 
Teufelsdrockh, isolated, shy, retiring as he 
was, had not altogether escaped notice : certain 
established men are aware of his existence; 
and, if stretching out no helpful hand, have at 
least their eyes on him. He appears, though 
in dreary enough humor, to be addressing him- 
self to the Profession of Law ; — whereof, in- 
deed, the world has since seen him a public 
graduate. But omitting these broken, unsatis- 
factory thrums of Economical relation, let us 
present rather the following small thread of 
Moral relation ; and therewith, the reader for 
himself weaving it in at the right place, con- 
clude our dim arras-picture of these University 
years. 

"Here also it was that I formed acquaint- 
ance with Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps 
better written, Herr Toughgut ; a young per- 
son of quality [von Adel), from the interior 
parts of England. He stood connected, by 
blood and hospitality, with the Counts von 
Zahdarm, in this quarter of Germany; to which 
noble Family I likewise was, by his means, with 
all friendliness, brought near. Towgood had 
a fair talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with 
considerable humor of character: and, bating 
his total ignorance, for he knew nothing ex- 

10 Sartor Resartas 



138 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

cept Boxing and a little Grammar, showed less 
of that aristocratic impassivity, and silent fury, 
than for most part belongs to Travelers of his 
nation. To him I owe my first practical 
knowledge of the English and their ways ; per- 
haps also something of the partiality with 
which I have ever since regarded that singular 
people. Towgood was not v/ithout an eye, 
could he have come at any light. Invited 
doubtless by the presence of the Zahdarm 
Family, he had traveled hither, in the almost 
frantic hope of perfecting his studies; he, 
whose studies had as yet been those of infancy, 
hither to a University where so much as the 
notion of perfection, not to say the effort after 
it, no longer existed! Often we would con- 
dole over the hard destiny of the Young in 
this era: how, after all our toil, we were to 
ble turned out into the world, with beards on 
our chins indeed, but with few other attributes 
of manhood; no existing thing that we were 
trained to Act on, nothing that we could so 
much as Believe. 'How has our head on the 
outside a polished Hat,* would Tov/good ex- 
claim, 'and in the inside Vacancy, or a froth of 
Vocables and Attorney-logic! At a small cost 
men are educated to make leather into shoes; 
but at a great cost, what am I educated to 
make? By Heaven, Brother! what I have 
already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, 
would endow a considerable Hospital of Incur- 
ables. ' — 'Man indeed,' I would answer, 'has a 
Digestive Faculty, which must be kept work- 
ing, v/ere it even parti}'' by stealth. But as for 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 139 

our Mis-education, make not bad worse ; waste 
not the time yet ours, in trampling on thistles 
because they have yielded us no figs. Frisch 
zii Briider! Here are Books, and we have 
brains to read them; here is a whole Earth and 
a whole Heaven, and we have eyes to look on 
them : Frisch zuT 

"Often also our talk was gay; not without 
brilliancy, and even fire. We looked out on 
life, with its strange scaffolding, where all at 
once harlequins dance, and men are beheaded 
and quartered: motley, not unterrific was the 
aspect; but we looked on it like brave youths. 
For myself, these were perhaps my most 
genial hours. Toward this young warmhearted, 
strongheaded and wrongheaded Herr Tow- 
good I was even near experiencing the now 
obsolete sentiment of Friendship. Yes, foolish 
Heathen that I was, I felt that, under certain 
conditions, I could have loved this man, and 
taken him to my bosom, and been his brother 
once and always. By degrees, however, I un- 
derstood the new time, and its wants. If man's 
Soul is indeed, as in the Finnish Language, 
and Utilitarian Philosophy, a kind of Stomach, 
what else is the true meaning of Spiritual 
Union but an Eating together? Thus we, in- 
stead of Friends, are Dinner-guests ; and here 
as elsewhere have cast away chimeras." 

So ends, abruptly as usual, and enigmati- 
cally, this little incipient romance. What 
henceforth becomes of the brave Herr Tow- 
good, or Tough gut? He has dived-under, in 



140 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the Autobiographical Chaos, and swims we 
see not where. Does any reader "in the in- 
terior parts of England" know of such a 
man? 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 141 



CHAPTER IV. 

GETTING UNDER WAY. 

"Thus nevertheless," writes our Autobiog- 
arpher, apparently as quitting College, "was 
there realized Somewhat; namely, I, Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh : a visible Temporary Figure 
(Zeitbild), occupying some cubic feet of Space, 
and containing within it Forces both physical 
and spiritual; hopes, passions, thoughts; the 
whole wondrous furniture, in more or less per- 
fection, belonging to that mystery, a Man. 
Capabilities there were in me to give battle, in 
some small degree, against the great Empire 
of Darkness : does not the very Ditcher and 
Delver, with his spade, extinguish many a 
thistle and puddle ; and so leave a little Order, 
where he found the opposite? Nay, your very 
Daymoth has capabilities in this kind; and 
ever organizes something (into its own Body, 
if no otherwise), which was before Inorganic; 
and of mute dead air makes living -music, 
though only of the faintest, by humming. 

"Hov7 much more, one whose capabilities 
are spiritual ; who has learned, or begun learn- 
ing, the grand thaumaturgic art of Thought ! 
Thaumaturgic I name it ; for hitherto all Mira- 
cles have been wrought thereby, and hence- 
forth innumerable will be wrought; whereof 



142 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

we, even in these days, witness some. Of the 
Poet's and Prophet's inspired Message, and 
how it makes and unmakes whole worlds, I 
shall forbear mention : but cannot the dullest 
hear Steam-engines clanking around him? 
Has he not seen the Scottish Brassmith's Idea 
(and this but a mechanical one) traveling on 
fire-wings round the Cape, and across two 
Oceans; and stronger than any other Enchan- 
ter's Familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetch- 
ing and carrying: at home, not only weaving 
Cloth, but rapidly enough overturning the 
whole old system of Society; and, for Feudal- 
ism and Preservation of the Game, preparing 
us, by indirect but sure methods. Industrialism 
and the Government of the Wisest? Truly a 
Thinking Man is the worst enemy the Prince 
of Darkness can have ; every time such a one 
announces himself, I doubt not, there runs a 
shudder through the Nether Empire ; and new 
Emissaries are trained, with new tactics, to, 
if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and 
handcuff him. 

"With such high vocation had I, too, as den- 
izen of the Universe, been called. Unhappy it 
is, however, that though born to the amplest 
Sovereignty, in this way, with no less than sov- 
ereign right of Peace and War against the Time- 
Prince iZeitfiirst), or Devil, and all his Domin- 
ions, your coronation-ceremony costs such 
trouble, your scepter is so difficult to get at, or 
even to get eye on!" 

By which last wire-drawn similitude does 
Teufelsdrockh mean no more than that young 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 143 

men find obstacles in what we call "getting 
tinder way?" "Not what I have," continues 
he, "but what I Do is my Kingdom. To each 
is given a certain inward Talent, a certain 
outward Environment of Fortune; to each, 
by wisest combination of these two, a certain 
maximum of Capability. But the hardest prob- 
lem were ever this first: To find by study of 
yourself, and of the ground you stand on, what 
your combined inward and outward Capability 
specially is. For, alas, our young soul is all 
budding with Capabilities, and we see not yet 
which is the main and true one. Always too 
the new man is in a new time, under new con- 
ditions; his course can be the fac- simile of no 
prior one, but is by its nature original. And 
then how seldom V\dll the outward Capability 
iit the inward: though talented wonderfully 
enough, we are poor, unfriended, dyspeptical, 
bashful; nay what is worse than all, we are 
foolish. Thus, in the whole imbroglio of 
Capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to 
grope which is ours, and often clutch the 
wrong one : in this mad work must several 
years of our small term be spent, till the pur- 
blind Youth, by practice, acquire notions of 
distance, and become a seeing Man. Na}', 
many so spend their whole term, and in ever- 
new expectation, ever-new disappointment, 
shift from enterprise to enterprise, and from 
side to side: till at length, as exasperated strip- 
lings of three-score-and-ten, they shift into 
their last enterprise, that of getting buried. 
• "Such, since the most of us are too ophthal- 



144 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

mic, would be the general fate; were it not 
that one thing saves us: our Hunger. For on 
this ground, as the prompt nature of Hunger 
is well known, must a prompt choice be made ; 
hence have we, with wise foresight, Indentures 
and Apprenticeships for our irrational young; 
whereby, in due season, the vague universality 
of a Man shall find himself ready-molded into 
a specific Craftsman ; and so thenceforth work, 
with much or with little waste of Capability as 
it may be ; yet not with the worst waste, that 
of time. Nay even in matters spiritual, since 
the spiritual artist too is born blind, and does 
not, like certain other creatures, receive sight 
in nine days, but far later, sometimes never, 
— is it not well that there should be what we call 
Professions, or Bread-studies iBrodzwecke)^ 
preappointed us? Here, circling like the gin- 
horse, for whom partial or total blindness is 
no evil, the Bread-artist can travel contentedly 
round and round, still fancying that it is for- 
ward and forward; and realize much: for 
himself victual; for the world an additional 
horse's power in the grand corn-mill or hemp- 
mill of Economic Society. For me too had 
such a leading-string been provided ; only that 
it proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled 
me, till I broke it off. Then, in the words of 
Ancient Pistol, did the world generally become 
mine oyster, which I, by strength or cunning, 
was to open, as I would and could. Almost 
had I deceased {fast war ich umgekommeii)^ so 
obstinately did it continue shut." 

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 145 

Spirit of much that was to befall our Autobi- 
ographer; the historical embodiment of which, 
as it painfully takes shape in his Life, lies 
scattered, in dim disastrous details, through 
this Bag Pisces, and those that follow. A 
young man of high talent, and high though 
still temper, like a young mettled colt, **breaks 
off his neck-halter," and bounds forth, from 
his peculiar manger, into the wide world; 
which, alas, he finds all rigorously fenced in. 
Richest clover-fields tempt his eye ; but to him 
they are forbidden pasture: either pining in 
progressive starvation, he must stand; or, in 
mad exasperation, must rush to an^ fro, leap- 
ing against sheer stone walls, which he cannot 
leap over, which only lacerate and lame him ; 
till at last, after thousand attempts and endur- 
ances, he, as if by miracle, clears his way ; not 
indeed into luxuriant and luxurious clover, yet 
into a certain bosky wilderness where exist- 
ence is still possible, and Freedom, though 
waited on by Scarcity, is not without sweet- 
ness. In a word, Teufelsdrockh having 
thrown-up his legal Profession, finds himself 
without landmark of outward guidance; 
whereby his previous want of decided Belief, 
or inward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. 
Necessity urges him on ; Time wUl not stop, 
neither can he, a Son of Time ; wild passions 
without solacement, wild faculties without 
employment, ever vex and agitate him. He 
too must enact that stern Monodrama, No 
Object and no Rest ; must front its successive 

10 



145 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

destines, work through to its catastrophe, and 
deduce therefrom what moral he can. 

Yet let us be just to him, let us admit that 
his "neck-halter" sat nowise easy on him; that 
he was in some degree forced to break it off. 
If we look at the young man's civic position, 
m this Nameless capital, as he emerges from 
its Nameless University, we can discern well 
that it was far from enviable. His first Law- 
Examination he has come through triumdh- 
aatly; and can even boast that the Examen 
Rigorostim need not have frightened him : but 
though he is hereby "an Auscultator of respect- 
ability, " what avails it? There is next to no 
employment to be had. Neither, for a youth 
without connections, is the process of Expect- 
ation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his 
disposition much cheered from without. "My 
fellow Auscultators, " he says, "were Ausculta- 
tors: they dressed, and digested, and talked 
articulate words; other vitality showed they 
almost none. Small speculation in those eyes, 
that they did glare withal ! Sense neither for 
the high nor for the deep, nor for aught human 
or divine, save only for the faintest scent of 
coming Preferment." In which words, indi- 
cating a total estrangement on the part of 
Teufelsdrockh, may there not also lurk traces 
of a bitterness as from wounded vanity? 
Doubtless these prosaic Auscultators may have 
sniffed at him, with his strange ways ; and tried 
to hate, and what was m.uch more impossible, 
to despise him. Friendly communion, in any 
case, there could not be: already has the young 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 147 

Teufelsdrockh left the other young- geese ; and 
swims apart, though as yet uncertain whether 
he himself is cygnet or gosling. 

Perhaps, too, what little employment he had 
was performed ill, at best unpleasantly. ' ' Great 
practical method and expertness" he may brag 
of; but is there not also great practical pride, 
though deep-hidden, only the deeper-seated? 
So shy a man can never have been popular. 
We figure to ourselves, how in those days he 
may have played strange freaks with his inde- 
pendence, and so forth ; do not his own words 
betoken as much? "Like a very young per- 
son, I imagined it was with Work alone, and 
not also with Folly and Sin, in myself and 
others, that I had been appointed to struggle." 
Be this as it may, his progress from the passive 
Auscultatorship, toward any active Assessor- 
ship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, 
those same established men, once partially 
inclined to patronize him, seem to withdraw 
their countenance, and give him up as "a man 
of genius:" against which procedure he, in 
these Papers, loudly protests. "As if," says 
he, "the higher did not presuppose the lower; 
as if he who can fly into heaven, could not also 
walk post if he resolved on it ! But the world 
is an old woman, and mistakes any guilt farth 
ing for a gold coin ; whereby being often 
cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing but 
the common copper." 

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted 
as a terrestrial runner, contrived, in the mean- 
while, to keep himself from flying skyward 



148 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

without return, is not too clear from these 
Documents. Good old Gretchen seems to have 
vanished from the scene, perhaps from the 
Earth ; other Horn of Plenty, or even of Par- 
simony, nowhere flows for him; so that "the 
prompt nature of Hunger being well known," 
we are not without our anxiety. From private 
Tuition, in never so many languages and 
sciences, the aid derivable is small ; neither, to 
use his own words, ' ' does the young Adventurer 
hitherto suspect in himself any literary gift; 
but at best earns bread-and- water wages, by 
his wide faculty of Translation. Neverthe- 
less," continues he, "that I subsisted is clear, 
for you find me even now alive." Which fact, 
however, except upon the principle of our true- 
hearted, kind old Proverb, that "there is 
always life for a living one," we must profess 
ourselves unable to explain. 

Certain Landlords' Bills, and other economic 
Documents, bearing the mark of Settlement, 
indicate that he was not without money ; but, 
like an independent Hearth-holder, if not 
Householder, paid his way. Here also occur, 
among many others, two little mutilated Notes, 
which perhaps throw light on his condition. 
The first has now no date, or writer's name, 
but a huge Blot; and runs to this effect: 
"The [hikblot), tied down by previous promise, 
cannot, except by best wishes, forward the 
Herr Teufelsdrockh's views on the Assessor- 
ship in question; and sees himself under the 
cruel necessity of forbearing, for the present, 
what were otherwise his duty and joy, to assist 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 149 

in opening the career for a man of genius, on 
whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting. " 
The other is on gilt paper; and interests us 
like a sort of epistolary mummy now dead, yet 
which once lived and beneficently worked. 
We give it in the original: ''Herr Tenfehdrockh 
wird von der Frau Grafi?i, auf Dorinerstag, zum 
^sthetischen Thee schonstens eingeladen,'" 

Thus, in answer to a cry for solid pudding, 
whereof there is the most urgent need, comes, 
epigrammatically enough, the invitation to a 
wash of quite fluid ^Esthetic Tea! How Teu- 
felsdrockh, now at actual handgrips with 
Destiny herself, may have comported himself 
among these Musical and Literary Dilettanti 
of both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a 
feast of chicken-weed, we can only conjecture. 
Perhaps in expressive silence, and abstinence : 
otherwise if the lion, in such case, is to feast 
at all, it cannot be on the chicken-weed, but 
only on the chickens. For the rest, as this 
Frau Grafin dates from the Zahdarm House, 
she can be no other than the Countess and 
mistress of the same; whose intellectual ten- 
dencies, and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, 
whether on the footing of Herr Towgood, or 
on his own footing, are hereby manifest. That 
some sort of relation, indeed, continued, for a 
time, to connect our Autobiographer, though 
perhaps feebly enough, with this noble House, 
we have elsewhere express evidence. Doubt- 
less, if he expected patronage, it was in vain; 
enough for him if he here obtained occasional 
glimpses of the great world, from which we at 



150 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

one time fancied him to have been always 
excluded. ''The Zahdarms, " says he, "lived 
in the soft, sumptuous garniture of Aristocracy; 
whereto Literature and Art, attracted and 
attached from without, were to serve as the 
handsomest fringing. It was to the Gnadigen 
Frau (her Ladyship) that this latter improve- 
ment was due: assiduously she gathered, dex- 
trously she fitted on, what fringing was to be 
had; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." 
Was Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or 
cobweb; or promising to be such? "With his 
Excelleiiz (the Count)," continues he, "I have 
more than once had the honor to converse; 
chiefly on general affairs, and the aspect of the 
world, which he, though now past middle life, 
viewed in no unfavorable light; finding indeed, 
except the Outrooting of Journalism {die 
aiiszitrotiende Joitrnalistik')^ little to desiderate 
therein. On some points, as his Excellenz was 
not uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to 
keep silence. Besides, his occupation being 
that of Owning Land, there might be faculties 
enough, which, as superfluous for such use, 
were little developed in him." 

That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the 
world was nowise so faultless, and many things 
besides "the Outrooting of Journalism" might 
have seemed improvements, we can readily 
conjecture. With nothing but a barren Aus- 
cultatorship from v\rithout, and so many mutin- 
ous thoughts and wishes from within, his posi- 
tion was no easy one. "The Universe," he 
says, "was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 151 

I knew so little of, yet must rede, or be 
devoured. In red streaks of unspeakable 
grandeur, yet also in the blackness of darkness, 
was Life, to my too unfurnished Thought 
unfolding itself, A strange contradiction lay 
in me; and I as yet knew not the solution of 
it; knew not that spiritual music can spring 
only from discords set in harmony ; that but 
for Evil there were no Good, as victory is only 
possible by battle." 

"I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," 
observes he elsewhere, "by not unphilanthropic 
persons, that it were a real increase of human 
happiness, could all young men from the age 
of nineteen be covered under barrels, or ren- 
dered otherwise invisible; and there left to 
follow their lawful studies and callings, till 
they emerged sadder and wiser, at the age of 
twenty-five. With which suggestion, at least 
as considered in the light of a practical scheme, 
I need scarcely say that I nowise coincide. 
Nevertheless it is plausibly urged that, as 
young ladies (Madcheii) are, to mankind, pre- 
cisely the most delightful in those years; so 
young gentlemen {Bubcheii) do then attain their 
maximum of detestability. Such gawks 
{Geckeii) aT«. they, and foolish peacocks, and 
yet Vv^itb' sticii^^a vulturous hunger for self- 
indulgence; so obstinate, obstreperous, vain- 
glorious; in all senses, so frov/ard and so 
forward. No mortal's endeavor or attainment 
will, in the smallest, content the as yet unen- 
deavoring, unattaining young gentleman ; but 
lie could make it all infinitely better, were it 



152 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most 
manageable matter, simple as a question in the 
Rule-of-Three : multiply your second and third 
term together, divide the product by the first, 
and your quotient will be the answer, — -which 
you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The 
booby has not yet found out, by any trial, that, 
do what one will, there is ever a cursed frac- 
tion, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net 
integer quotient so much as to be thought of." 
In which passage does not there lie an implied 
confession that Teufelsdrockh himself, besides 
his outward obstructions, had an inward, still 
greater, to contend with; namely, a certain 
temporary, youthful, yet still afflictive derange- 
ment of head? Alas, on the former side alone, 
his case was hard enough. "It continues ever 
true," says he, "that Saturn, or Chronos, or 
what we call Time, devours all his Children: 
only by incessant Running, by incessant Work- 
ing, may you (for some threescore-and-ten 
years) escape him ; and you too he devours at 
last. Can any Sovereign, or Holy Alliance of 
Sovereigns, bid Time stand still; even in 
thought, shake themselves free of Time? Our 
whole terrestrial being is based on Time, and 
built of Time; it is wholly a Movement, a 
Time-impulse; Time is the author of it, the 
material of it. Hence also our Whole Duty, 
which is to move, to work, — in the right direc- 
tion. Are not our Bodies and our Souls in 
continual movement, whether we will or not; 
in a continual Waste, requiring a continual 
Repair? Utmost satisfaction of our whole out- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 153 

ward and inward Wants were but satisfaction 
for a space of Time ; thus, whatso we have 
done, is done, and for us annihilated, and ever 
must we go and do anew. O, Time — Spirit, 
how hast thou environed and imprisoned us, 
and sunk us so deep in thy troublous dim Time- 
Element, that only in lucid moments can so 
much as glimpses of our upper Azure Home be 
revealed to us! Me, however, as a Son of 
Time, unhappier than some others, was Time 
threatening to eat quite prematurely; for, 
strive as I might, there was no good Running, 
so obstructed was the path, so gyved were the 
feet." That is to say, we presume, speaking 
in the dialect of this lower world, that Teu- 
felsdrockh's whole duty and necessity was, like 
other men's, "to work,— in the right direc- 
tion," and that no work was to be had; whereby 
he become wretched enough. As was natural: 
with haggard Scarcity threatening him in the 
distance ; and so vehement a soul languishing 
in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like 
Sir Hudibras' sword by rust, 

To eat into itself, for lack 

Of something else to hew and hack ! 

But on the whole, that same "excellent Pas- 
sivity," as it has all along done, is here again 
vigorously flourishing; in which circumstance 
may we not trace the iDcginnings of much that 
now characterizes our Professor; and perhaps, 
in faint rudiments, the origin of the Clothes- 
Philosophy itself? Already the attitude he has 



154 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

assumed toward the World is too defensive ; 
not, as would have been desirable, a bold atti- 
tude of attack. "So far hitherto, " he says, 
"as I had mingled with mankind, I was not- 
able, if for anything, for a certain stillness of 
manner, which, as my friends often rebuk- 
ingly declared, did but ill express the keen 
ardor of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded 
men with an excess both of love and of fear. 
The mystery of a Person, indeed, is ever divine 
to him that has a sense for the Godlike. 
Often, notwithstanding, was I blamed, and by 
half -strangers hated, for my so-called Hardness 
{Harte), my indifferentism toward men; and 
the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as my 
favorite dialect in conversation. Alas, the 
panoply of Sarcasm was but as a buckram case, 
wherein I had striven to envelop myself; that 
so my own poor Person might live safe there, 
and in all friendliness, being no longer exasp- 
erating by wounds. Sarcasm I now see to be, 
in general, the language of the Devil; for 
which reason I have long since as good as 
renounced it. But how many individuals did 
I, in those days, provoke into some degree of 
hostility thereby ! An ironic man, with his sly 
stillness, and ambuscading ways, more espe- 
cially an ironic young man, from whom it is 
least expected, may be viewed as a pest to 
society. Have we not seen persons of weight 
and name coming forward, with gentlest indif- 
ference, to tread such a one out of sight, as an 
insignificancy and worm, start ceiling-high 
{balkenhoch) , and thence fall shattered and 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 165 

supine, to be . borne home on shutters, not 
without indignation, when he proved electric 
and a torpedo. " 

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness 
of temper make way for himself in Life; where 
the first problem, as Teufelsdrochk too admits, 
is "to unite yourself with some one and with 
somewhat {sich anzuschliesseii)V' Division, not 
union, is written on most part of his procedure. 
Let us add too that, in no great length of time, 
the only important connection he had ever suc- 
ceeded in forming, his connection with the 
Zahdarm Family, seems to have been par- 
alyzed, for all practical uses, by the death of 
the "not uncholeric" old Count. This fact 
stands recorded, quite incidentally, in a certain 
Discourse on Epitaphs, huddled into the pres- 
ent Bag, among so much else ; of which Essay 
the learning and curious penetration are more 
to be approved of than the spirit. His grand 
principle is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what 
sort soever, should be Historical rather than 
Lyrical. "By request of that worthy Noble- 
man's survivors," says he, "I undertook to 
compose his Epitaph; and not unmindful of 
niy own rules, produced the following; which, 
however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a 
defect never yet fully visible to myself, still 
remains unengraven;" — wherein we may pre- 
dict, there is more than the Latinity that will 
surprise an English reader: 



156 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

HIC JACET 

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE 
MAGNUS, 

ZAEHDARMI COMES, 

EX IMPERII CONCILIO, 

VELLERIS AUREI, PERISCELIDIS, NECNON VULTURIS 

NIGRI EQUES. 

QUI DUM SUB LUNA AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICF 

PLUMBO CONFECIT: 

VARII CIBI 

CENTUMPONDIA MILLIES CENTENA MILLIA, 

PER SE, PERQUE SERVOS QUADRUPEDES BIPEDESVEJ 

HAUD SINE TUMULTU DEVOLVENS, 

IN STERCUS 

PALAM CONVERTIT. 

NUNC A LABORE REQUIESCENTEM 
OPERA SEQUUNTUR. 

SI MONUMENTUM QU^RIS, 
FIMETUM ADSPICE. 

PRIMUM IN ORBE DEJECIT \silb dat6\\ POSTREMUM 

\sub dat6\. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 157 



CHAPTER V. 

ROMANCE. 

"For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, 
*'had the poor Hebrew, in this Egypt of an 
Auscultatorship, painfully toiled, baking bricks 
without stubble, before ever the question once 
struck him with entire force: For what? — Beym 
Himmel! For Food and Warmth! And are 
Food and Warmth nowhere else, in the whole 
wide Universe, discoverable? — Come of it what 
might, I resolved to try." 

Thus then are we to see him in a new inde- 
pendent capacity, though perhaps far from an 
improved one. Teufelsdrockh is now a man 
without Profession. Quitting the common 
Fleet of herring-busses and whalers, where, 
indeed, his leeward, laggard condition was 
painful enough, he desperately steers o£E, on a 
course of his own, by sextant and compass of 
his own. Unhappy Teufelsdrockh! Though 
neither Fleet nor Traffic, nor Commodores 
pleased thee, still was it not a Fleet, sailing in 
prescribed track, for fixed objects; above all, 
in combination, wherein, by mutual guidance, 
by all manner of loans and borrowings, each 
could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou 
sail in unknown seas; and for thyself find that 
shorter Northwest Passage to thy fair Spice- 



158 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

country of a Nowhere? — A solitary rover, on 
such a voyage, with such nautical tactics, will 
meet with adventures. Nay, as we forthwith 
discover, a certain Calypso-Island detains him 
at the very outset ; and, as it were, falsifies and 
oversets his whole reckoning. 

"If in youth," writes he once, "the Universe 
is majestically unveiling, and everywhere 
Heaven revealing itself on Earth, nowhere to 
the Young Man does this Heaven on Earth so 
immediately reveal itself as in the Young 
Maiden. Strangely enough, in this strange life 
of ours, it has been so appointed. On the 
whole, as I have often said, a Person {Person- 
lichkeii) is ever holy to us ; a certain orthodox 
Anthropomorphism connects my Me with all 
Thees in bonds of Love: but it is in this ap- 
proximation of the Like and Unlike, that such 
heavenly attraction, as between Negative and 
Positive, first burns-out into a flame. Is the 
pitifuUest mortal Person, think you, indifferent 
to us? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish to 
be made one with him ; to unite him to us, by 
gratitude, by admiration, even by fear; or fail- 
ing all these, unite ourselves to him? But how 
much more, in this case of the Like-Unlike? 
Here is conceded us the higher mystic possibil- 
ity of such a union, the highest in our Earth; 
thus, in the conducting medium of Fantasy, 
flames-forth that fire development of the uni- 
versal Spiritual Electricity, which, as unfolded 
between man and woman, we first emphatic- 
ally denominate Love. 

"In every well-conditioned stripling, as I 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 159 

conjecture, there already blooms a certain 
prospective Paradise, cheered by some fairest 
Eve ; nor, in the stately vistas, and flowerage 
and foliage of that Garden, is a Tree of Knowl- 
edge, beautiful and awful in the midst thereof 
wanting. Perhaps, too, the whole is but the 
lovelier, if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword 
divide it from all footsteps of men ; and grant 
him, the imaginative stripling, only the view, 
not the entrance. Happy season of virtuous 
youth, when shame is still an impassable celes- 
tial barrier; and the sacred air-cities of Hope 
have not shrunk into the mean clay-hamlets of 
Reality ; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite 
and free ! 

"As for our young Forlorn," continues Teu- 
felsdrockh, evidently meaning himself, "in his 
secluded way of life, and with his glowing 
Fantasy, the more fiery that it burnt under 
cover, as in a reverberating furnace, his feel- 
ing toward the Queens of this Earth was, and, 
indeed, is, altogether unspeakable. A visible 
Divinity dwelt in them ; to our young Friend 
all v\^omen were holy, were heavenly. As 5^et 
he but saw them flitting past, in their many-col- 
ored angel-plumage ; or hovering mute and in- 
accessible on the outskirts of Esthetic Tea: 
all of air they were, all Soul and Form ; so 
lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose 
hand was the invisible Jacob's-ladder, whereby 
man might mount into 'very Heaven. That he, 
our poor Friend, should ever win for himself 
one of these Gracefuls {Holden) — Ach Gottf 
how could he hope it ; should he not have died 



160 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

under it? There was a certain delirious ver- 
tigo in the thought. 

"Thus was the young man, if all-skeptical 
of Demons and Angels such as the vulgar had 
once believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by 
hosts of true Sky-born, who visibly and audibly 
hovered round him wheresoever he went; and 
they had that religious worship in this thought, 
though as yet it was by their mere earthly and 
trivial name that he named them. But now, 
if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual Air- 
maiden, incorporated into tangibility and real- 
ity, should cast any electric glance of kind 
eyes, saying thereby, 'Thou, too, mayest love 
and be loved ;' and so kindle him,— good Heav- 
en, what a volcanic, earthquake-bringing, all- 
consuming fire were probably kindled!" 

Such a fire, it afterward appears, did ac- 
tually burst forth, with explosions more or less 
Vesuvian, in the inner man of Herr Diogenes; 
as, indeed, how could it fail? A nature, which, 
in his own figurative style, we might say, had 
now not a little carbonized tinder, of Irritabil- 
ity ; with so much niter of latent Passion, and 
sulphurous Humor enough : the whole lying in 
such hot neighborhood, close by "a reverberat- 
ing furnace of Fantasy:" have we not here the 
components of dryest Gunpowder, ready, on 
occasion of the smallest spark, to blaze up? 
Neither, in this our Life-element, are sparks 
anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some 
Angel, whereof so many hovered round, would 
one day, leaving "the outskirts of Esthetic 
Tea," flit nigher; and, by electric Promethean 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 161 

glance, kindle no despicable firework. Happy, 
if it, indeed, proved a Firework, and flamed- 
off rocketwise, in successive beautiful bursts of 
splendor, each growing naturally from the 
other, through the several stages of a happy 
Youthful Love ; till the whole were safely burnt 
out; and the young soul relieved with little 
damage! Happy, if it did not rather prove a 
Conflagration and mad Explosion; painfully 
lacerating the heart itself; nay, perhaps bursts 
ing the heart in pieces (which were Death) ; or, 
at best, bursting the thin walls of your "rever- 
berating furnace," so that it rage thenceforth 
all unchecked among the contiguous combusti- 
bles (which were Madness) : till of the so fair 
and manifold internal world of our Diogenes, 
there remained Nothing, or only the "crater 
of an extinct volcano!" 

From multifarious Documents in this Bag 
Capricornus, and in the adjacent ones on both 
sides thereof, it becomes manifest that our 
philosopher, as stoical and cynical as he now 
looks, was heartily and even frantically in 
Love; here, therefore, may our old doubts 
whether his heart were of stone or of flesh give 
way. He loved once; not wisely, but too well. 
And once only: for as your Congreve needs a 
new case or wrappage for every new rocket, so 
each human heart can properly exhibit but one 
Love, if even one; the "First Love which is 
infinite" can be followed by no second like 
unto it. In more recent years, accordingly, 
the Editor of these Sheets was led to regard 
Teufelsdrockh as a man not only who would 

11 Sartor Resartua 



162 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

never wed, but who v/ould never even flirt; 
whom the grand-climacteric itself, and St. 
Martin's Summer of incipient Dotage, would 
crown with no new myrtle garland. To the 
Professor, women are henceforth Pieces of Art ; 
of Celestial Art, indeed ; w^hich celestial pieces 
he glories to survey in galleries, but has lost 
thought of purchasing. 

Psychological readers are not without curios- 
ity to see how Teufelsdrockh, in this for him 
unexampled predicament, demeans himself; 
with what specialties of successive configura- 
tion, splendor, and color, his Firework blazes 
off. Small, as usual, is the satisfaction that 
such can meet with here. From amid these 
confused masses of Eulogy and Elegy, with 
their mad Petrarchan and Werterean ware 
lying madly scattered among all sorts of quite 
extraneous matter, not so much as the fair 
one's name can be deciphered. For, without 
doubt, the title Blumine, whereby she is here 
designated, and which means simply Goddess 
of Flowers, must be fictitious. Was her real 
name Flora, then? But what was her surname, 
or had she none? Of what station in Life was 
she; of what parentage, fortune, aspect? Spe- 
cially, by what Pre-established Harmony of 
occurrences did the Lover and the Loved meet 
one another in so wide a world; how did they 
behave in such meeting? To all which ques- 
tions, not unessential in a Biographic work, 
mere conjecture must for most part return 
answer. "It was appointed," says our Philos- 
opher, "that the high celestial orbit of Blum- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 163 

ine should intersect the low sublunary one of 
our Forlorn ; that he, looking in her empyrean 
eyes, should fancy the upper Sphere of Light 
was come down into this nether sphere of 
Shadows ; and finding himself mistaken, make 
noise enough. " 

We seem to gather that she was young, 
hazel-eyed, beautiful and some one's Cousin; 
high-born, and of high spirit; but unhappily 
dependent and insolvent; living, perhaps, on 
the not too gracious bounty of moneyed rela- 
tives. But how came "the Wanderer" into her 
circle? Was it by the humid vehicle of Es- 
thetic Tea, or by the arid one of mere Busi- 
ness? Was it on the hand of Herr Towgood; 
or of the Gnadige Frau, who, as an ornamental 
Artist, might sometimes like to promote flirta- 
tion, especially for young cynical Nondescripts? 
To all appearance, it was chiefly by Accident, 
and the grace of Nature. 

"Thou fair Waldschloss, " writes our Auto- 
biographer, "what stranger ever saw thee, were 
it even an absolved Auscultator, officially bear- 
ing in his pocket the last Relatio ex Actis he 
would ever write, but must have paused to 
wonder! Noble Mansion! There stoodest 
thou, in deep Mountain Amphitheater, on 
umbrageous lawns, in thy serene solitude; 
stately, massive, all of granite; glittering in 
the western sunbeams, like a palace of El Dor- 
ado, overlaid with precious metal. Beautiful 
rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope of thy 
guardian Hills; of the greenest was their 
sward, embossed with its dark-brown frets of 



164 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

crag, or spotted by some spreading solitary 
Tree and its shadow. To the unconscious 
Wayfarer thou wert also as an Amnion's Tem- 
ple, in the Libyan Waste; where, for joy and 
woe, the tablet of his Destiny lay written. 
Well might he pause and gaze ; in that glance 
of his were prophecy and nameless forebod- 
ings." 

But now let us conjecture that the so pre- 
sentient Auscultator has handed-in his Relatio 
£x Actis; been invited to a glass of Rhine- 
wine ; and so, instead of returning dispirited 
and athirst to his dusty Town-home, is ushered 
into the Garden-house, where sit the choicest 
party of dames and cavaliers ; if not engaged 
in Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening con- 
versation, and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we 
hear of "harps and pure voices making the 
stillness live." Scarcely, it would seem, is the 
Garden-house inferior in respectability to the 
noble Mansion itself. "Embowered amid rich 
foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and odors 
of thousand flowers, here sat that brave com- 
pany; in front, from the wide-opened doors, 
fair outlook over blossom and bush, over grove 
and velvet green, stretching, undulating 
onward to the remote Mountain peaks; so 
bright, so mild, and everywhere the melody 
of birds and happy creatures; it was all as if 
man had stolen a shelter from the Sun in the 
bosom vesture of Summer herself. How came 
it that the Wanderer advanced thither with 
such forecasting heart (ahndungsvoll)^ by the 
side of his gray host? Did he feel that to these 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 165 

soft influences his hard bosom ought to be shut ; 
that here, once more, Fate had it in view to 
try him ; to mock him, and see whether there 
were Humor in him? 

"Next moment he finds himself presented to 
the party ; and especially by name to — Blumine ! 
Peculiar among all dames and damosels glanced 
Blumine, there in her modesty, like a star 
among earthly lights. Noblest maiden ! whom 
he bent to, in body and in soul ; yet scarcely 
dared look at, for the presence filled him with 
painful, yet sweetest embarrassment. 

"Blumine's was a name well known to him; 
far and wide was the fair one heard of, for her 
gifts, her graces, her caprices; from all which 
vague colorings of Rumor, from the censures 
no less than from the praises, had our friend 
painted for himself a certain imperious Queen 
of Hearts, and blooming warm Earth-angel, 
much more enchanting than your mere white 
Heaven-angels of women, in whose placid 
veins circulates too little naphtha fire. Her- 
self also he had seen in public places; that 
light yet so stately form ; those dark tresses, 
shading a face where smiles and sunlight 
played over earnest deeps: but all this he had 
seen only as a magic vision, for him inacces- 
sible, almost without reality. Her sphere was 
too far from his; how should she ever think of 
him ; O Heaven ! how should they so much as 
once meet together? And now that Rose-god- 
dess sits in the same circle with him ; the light 
of her eyes has smiled on him; if he speak, she 
will hear it! Nay, v/ho knows, since the heav- 



166 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

enly Sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine 
herself might have aforetime noted the so un- 
notable ; perhaps, from his very gainsayers, as 
he had from hers, gathered wonder, gathered 
favor for him. Was the attraction, the agita- 
tion mutual, then; pole and pole trembling 
toward contact, when once brought into 
neighborhood? Say rather, heart swelling in 
presence of the Queen of Hearts; like the Sea 
swelling when once near its Moon ! With the 
Wanderer it was even so: as in heavenward 
gravitation, suddenly as at the touch of a Ser- 
aph's wand, his whole soul is roused from its 
deepest recesses; and all that was painful and 
that was blissful there, dim images, vague 
feelings of a whole Past and a whole Future, 
are heaving in unquiet eddies within him. 

''Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our 
still Friend shrunk forcibly together; and 
shrouded-up his tremors and flutterings, of 
what sort soever, in a safe cover of Silence, 
and perhaps of seeming Stolidity. How was 
it, then, that here, when trembling to the core 
of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but 
rose into strength, into fearlessness and clear- 
ness? It was his guiding Genius {Damo?i) that 
inspired him; he must go forth and meet his 
Destiny. Show thyself now, whispered it, or 
be forever hid. Thus sometimes it is even 
when your anxiety becomes transcendental, 
that the soul first feels herself able to trans- 
cend it; that she rises above it, in fiery victory; 
and borne on new-found wings of victory, 
moves so calmly, even because so rapidly, so 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 167 

irresistibly. Always must the Wanderer re- 
member, with a certain satisfaction and sur- 
prise, how in this case he sat not silent, but 
struck adroitly into the stream of conversation ; 
which thenceforth, to speak with an apparent 
not a real vanity, he may say that he continued 
to lead. Surely, in those hours, a certain in- 
spiration was imparted to him, such inspiration 
as is still possible in our late era. The self- 
secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in 
free, glowing words ; his soul is as one sea of 
light, the peculiar home of Truth and Intel- 
lect; wherein also Fantasy bodies-forth form 
after form, radiant with all prismatic hues." 

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meet- 
ing, there talked one "Philistine;" who even 
now, to the general weariness, was dominantly 
pouring-forth Philistinism {Philistriositate?i) ; 
little witting what hero was here entering to 
demolish him! We omit the series of Socratic, 
or rather Biogenic utterances, not unhappy in 
their way, whereby the monster, ''persuaded 
into silence," seems soon after to have with- 
drawn for the night. "Of which dialectic ma- 
rauder," writes our hero, "the discomfiture 
was visibly felt as a benefit by most : but what 
were all applauses to the glad smile, threaten- 
ing every moment to become a laugh, where in 
Blumine herself repaid the victor? He ven- 
tured to address her, she answered with atten- 
tion; nay, what if there were a slight tremor 
in that silver voice; v/hat if the red glow of 
evening were hiding a transient blush! 

**The conversation took a hio^her tone, one 



168 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

fine thought called forth another ; it was one 
of those rare seasons, when the soul expands 
with full freedom, and man feels himself 
brought near to man. Gayly in light, grace- 
ful abandonment, the friendly talk pla37'ed 
round that circle ; for the burden was rolled 
from every heart; the barriers of Ceremony, 
which are, indeed, the laws of polite living, 
had melted as into vapor ; and the poor claims 
of Me and Thee, no longer parted by rigid 
fences, now flowed softly into one another; 
and Life lay all harmonious, many-tinted, like 
some fair royal campaign, the sovereign and 
owner of which were Love only. Such music 
springs from kind hearts, in a kind environ- 
ment of place and time. And yet as the light 
grew more aerial on the mountain-tops, and 
the shadows fell longer over the valley, some 
faint tone of sadness may have breathed 
through the heart; and, in whispers more or 
less audible, reminded every one that as this 
bright day was drawing toward its close, so 
likewise must the Day of Man's Existence de- 
cline into dust and darkness; and with all its 
sick toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, 
sink in still Eternity. 

**To our Friend the hours seemed moments; 
holy was he and happy : the words from those 
sweetest lips came over him like dew on thirsty 
grass; all better feelings in his soul seemed 
to whisper, It is good for us to be here. At 
parting, the Blumine's hand was in his: in the 
balmy twilight, with the kind stars above 
them, he spoke something of meeting again, 




He clasped her to his bosom." — Page 173. 

Sartor Resartus. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 169 

which was not contradicted; he pressed gently 
those small soft fingers, and it seemed as if 
they were not hastily, not angrily withdrawn. " 
Poor Teufelsdrockh ! it is clear to demon- 
stration thou art smit: the Queen of Hearts 
would see a "man of genius" also sigh for her; 
and there, by art-magic, in that preternatural 
hour, has she bound and spellbound thee. 
"Love is not altogether a Delirium," says he 
elsewhere; "yet has it many points in common 
therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the 
Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; 
which discerning again may be either true or 
false, either seraphic or demoniac. Inspiration 
or Insanity. But in the former case too, as in 
common Madness, it is Fantasy that superadds 
itself to sight ; on the so petty domain of the 
Actual plants its Archimedes-lever, whereby 
to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fantasy 
I might call the true Heaven-gate and Hell- 
gate of man: his sensuous life is but the small 
temporary stage [Zeitbuhne), v^^hereon thick- 
streaming influences from both these far yet 
near regions meet visibly, and act tragedy and 
melodrama. Sense can support herself hand- 
somely, in most countries, for some eighteen- 
pence a day; but for Fantasy planets and solar- 
systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus 
conquering the world, yet drinking no better 
red wine than he had before." Alas! witness 
also your Diogenes, flame-clad, scaling the 
upper Heaven, and verging toward Insanity, 
for prize of a "high-souled Brunette," as if the 
earth held but one and not several of these ! 

12 Sartor fiesartus 



170 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

He says that, in Town, they met again: 
*'day after day, like his heart's sun, the bloom- 
ing Blumine shone on him. Ah ! a little while 
ago, and he was yet in all darkness: him what 
Graceful (Holde) would ever love? Disbeliev- 
ing all things, the poor youth had never 
learned to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in 
proud timidity, within his own fastnesses; 
solitary from men, yet baited by night-specters 
enough, he saw himself, with a sad indigna- 
tion, constrained to renounce the fairest hopes 
of existence. And now, O, now! 'She looks 
on thee,' cried he: 'she the fairest, noblest; 
do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art not 
despised! The Heaven's-Messenger! All 
Heaven's blessings be hers!' Thus did soft 
melodies flow through his heart; tones of an 
infinite gratitude ; sweetest intimations that he 
also was a man, that for him also unutterable 
joys had been provided. 

"In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lam- 
bent glances, laughter, tears, and often with 
the inarticulate mystic speech of Music ; such 
was the element they now lived in; in such a 
many-tinted, radiant Aurora, and by this fair- 
est of Orient Light-bringers must our Friend 
be blandished, and the new Apocalypse of 
Nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine! 
And, even as a Star, all Fire and humid Soft- 
ness, a very Light-ray incarnate! Was there 
so much as a fault, a 'caprice,' he could have 
dispensed with? Was she not to him in very 
deed a Morning-Star; did not her presence 
bring with it airs from Heaven? Asfrom^olian 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 171 

Harps in the breath of dawn, as from the 
Memnon's Stature by the rosy finger of Aurora, 
unearthly music was around him, and lapped 
him into untried balmy Rest. Pale Doubt fied 
away to the distance; Life bloomed-up with 
happiness and hope. The past, then, was all 
a haggard dream ; he had been in the Garden 
of Eden, then, and could not discern it! But 
lo, now! the black walls of his prison melt 
away; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved 
his Disenchantress! Ach Gott! His whole 
heart and soul and life were hers, but never 
had he named it Love: existence was all a 
Feeling, not yet shaped into a thought." 

Nevertheless, into a Thought, nay into an 
Action, it must be shaped; for neither Disen- 
chanter nor Disenchantress, mere "Children of 
Time," can abide by Feeling alone. The 
Professor knows not, to this day, "how in her 
soft, fervid bosom the Lovely found determi- 
nation, even on hest of Necessity, to cut asun- 
der these so blissful bonds. " He even appears 
surprised at the "Duenna Cousin," whoever 
she may have been, "in whose meager, hunger- 
bitten philosophy, the religion of young hearts 
was, from the first, faintly approved of." 
We, even at such distance, can explain it with- 
out necromancy. Let the philosopher answer 
this one question. What figure, at that 
period, was a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to 
make in polished society? Could she have 
driven so much as a brass-bound Gig, or even 
a simple iron-spring one? Thou foolish "ab- 
solved Ascultator, ' ' before whom lies no pros- 



172 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

pect of capital, will any yet known "religion of 
young hearts" keep the human kitchen warm? 
Pshaw! the divine Blumine, when she "re- 
signed herself to wed some richer," shows 
more philosophy, though but "a woman of 
genius," than thou, a pretended man. 

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this 
Love-mania, and with what royal splendor it 
waxes, and rises. Let no one ask us to unfold 
the glories of its dominant state; much less the 
horrors of its almost instantaneous dissolution. 
How from such inorganic masses, henceforth 
madder than ever, as lie in these Bags, can 
even fragments of a living delineation be 
organized! Besides, of what profit were it! 
We view, with a lively pleasure, the gay silk 
Montgolfier start from the ground, and shoot 
upward, cleaving the liquid deeps, till it 
dwindle to a luminous star; but what is there 
to look longer on, when once, by natural elas- 
ticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded! A 
hapless air-navigator plunging, amid torn para- 
chutes, sand-bags, and confused wreck, fast 
enough into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to 
know that Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest 
regions of the Empyrean, by a natural para- 
bolic track, and returned thence in a quick 
perpendicular one. For the rest, let any feel- 
ing reader, who has been unhappy enough to 
do the like, paint it out for himself : considering- 
only that if he, for his perhaps comparativel}^ 
insignificant mistress, underwent such agonies 
and frenzies, what must Teufelsdrockh 's have 
been, with a fire-heart, and for a nonpareil 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 173 

Blumine! We glance merely at the final 
scene: 

"One morning, he found his Morning-star all 
dimmed and dusky-red; the fair creature was 
silent, absent, she seemed to have been weep- 
ing. Alas, no longer a Morning-star, but a 
troublous skyey Portent, announcing that the 
Doomsday had dawned ! She said, in a tremu- 
lous voice. They were to meet no more. " The 
thunder-struck Air-sailor is not wanting to 
himself in this dread hour: but what avails it? 
We omit the passionate expostulations, en- 
treaties, indignations, since all was vain, and 
not even an explanation was conceded him; 
and hasten to the catastrophe. " 'Farewell, 
then. Madam!' said he, not without sternness, 
for his stung pride helped him. She put her 
hand in his, she looked in his face, tears 
started to her eyes; in wild audacity he clasped 
her to his bosom; their lips were joined, their 
two souls, like two dew-drops, rushed into 
one, — for the first time, and for the last!" 
Thus was Teufelsdrockh made immortal by a 
kiss. And then? Why, then — "thick curtains 
of Night rushed over his soul, as rose the 
immeasurable Crash of Doom ; and through the 
ruins as of a shivered Universe was he falling, 
falling, toward the Abyss. ' ' 



174 SARTOR RESARTUS 



CHAPTER VI. 

SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 

We have long felt that, with a man like our 
Professor, matters must often be expected to 
take a course of their own ; that in so multi- 
plex, intricate a nature, there might be chan- 
nels, both for admitting and emitting, such as 
the Psychologist had seldom noted; in short, 
that on no grand occasion and convulsion, 
neither in the joy-storm nor in the woe-storm 
could you predict his demeanor. 

To our less philosophical readers, for exam- 
ple, it is now clear that the so passionate Teu- 
felsdrockh, precipitated through ''a shivered 
Universe" in this extraordinary way, has only 
one of three things vv^hich he can next do; 
Establish himself in Bedlam; begin writing 
Satanic poetry ; or blow out his brains. In the 
progress toward any of which consummations, 
do not such readers anticipate extravagance 
enough, breast-beating, brow-beating (against 
walls), lion-bellowings of blasphemy and the 
like, stampings, smitings, breakages of furni- 
ture, if not arson itself? 

Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. 
He quietly lifts his Pilgerstab (Pilgrim-staff), 
"old business being soon wound up;" and be- 
gins a perambulation and circumambulation of 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 175 

the terraqueous Globe! Curious it is, indeed, 
how with such vivacity of conception, such in- 
tensity of feeling-, above all, with these uncon- 
scionable habits of Exaggeration in speech, he 
combines that wonderful stillness of his, that 
stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his 
sudden bereavement, in this matter of the 
Flower-g-oddess, is talked of as a real Dooms- 
day and Dissolution of Nature, in which light 
doubtless it partly appeared to himself, his own 
nature is nowise dissolved thereby; but rather 
is compressed closer. For once, as we might 
say, a Blumine by magic appliances has un- 
locked that shut heart of his, and its hidden 
things rush out tumultuous, boundless, like 
genii enfranchised from their glass phial: but 
no sooner are your magic appliances with- 
drawn, than the strange casket of a heart 
springs-to again; and perhaps there is now no 
key extant that will open it, for a Teufels- 
drockh, as we remarked, will not love a second 
time. Singular Diogenes! No sooner has 
that heart-rending occurrence fairly taken 
place, than he affects to regard it as a thing 
natural, of which there is nothing more to be 
said. "One highest hope, seemingly legible 
in the eyes of an Angel, had recalled him as 
out of Death-shadows into celestial Life: but a 
gleam of Tophet passed over the face of his 
Angel; he was rapt away in whirlwinds, and 
heard the laughter of demons. It was a Calen- 
ture," adds he, "whereby the Youth saw green 
Paradise-groves in the waste Ocean waters: a 
lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for he saw 



176 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

it." But what things soever passed in him, 
when he ceased to see it ; what ragings and 
despairings soever Teufelsdrockh's soS was 
the scene of, he has the goodness to conceal 
under a quite opaque cover of Silence. We 
know it well; the first mad paroxysm past, 
our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered 
philosophies, and buttoned himself together; 
he was meek, silent, or spoke of the weather 
and the Journals ; only by a transient knitting 
of those shaggy brows, by some deep flash of 
those eyes, glancing one knew not whether 
with tear-dew or with fierce fire, — might you 
have guessed what a Gehenna was within; 
that a whole Satanic School were spouting, 
though inaudibly, there. To consume your 
own cholera, as some chimneys consume their 
own smoke; to keep a whole Satanic school 
spouting, if it must spout, inaudibly, is a nega- 
tive yet no slight virtue, nor one of the com- 
monest in these times. 

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to 
say, that in the strange measure he fell upon, 
there was not a touch of latent insanity; 
whereof indeed the actual condition of these 
Documents in Capricornus and Aquarius is no 
bad emblem. His so unlimited Wanderings, 
toilsome enough, are without assigned or per- 
haps assignable aim ; internal Unrest seems his 
sole guidance ; he wanders, wanders as if that 
curse of the Prophet had fallen on him, and he 
were "made like unto awheel." Doubtless, 
too, the chaotic nature of these Paper-bags 
aggravates our obscurity. Quite without note 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 177 

of preparation, for example, we come upon the 
following slip: "A peculiar feeling it is that 
will rise in the Traveler, when turning some 
hill-range in his desert road, he descries lying 
far below, embosomed among its groves and 
green natural bulwarks, and all diminished to 
a toy-box, the fair Town, where so many souls, 
as it were seen and yet unseen, are driving their 
multifarious traffic. Its white steeple is then 
truly a starward-pointing finger ; the canopy of 
blue smoke seems like a sort of Life-breath : 
for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity 
to whatsoever it looks on with love ; thus does 
the little Dwelling-place of men, in itself a 
congeries of houses and huts, become for us 
an individual, almost a person. But what 
thousand other thoughts unite thereto, if the 
place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous 
or mournful experiences ; if perhaps the cradle 
we were rocked in still stands there, if our Lov- 
ing ones still dwell there, if our Buried ones 
there slumber!" Does Teufelsdrockh, as the 
wounded e^gle is said to make for its own 
eyrie, and indeed military deserters, and all 
hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct 
in the direction of their birthland, — fly first, 
in this extremity, toward his native Entepfuhl ; 
but reflecting that there no help awaits him, 
take only one wistful look from the distance, 
and then wend elsewhither? 

Little happier seems to be his next flight: 
into the wilds of Nature ; as if in her mother- 
bosom he would seek healing. So at least we 
incline to interpret the following Notice, sepa- 



178 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

rated from the former by some considerable 
space, v/herein, however, is nothing note- 
worthy : 

''Mountains were not new to him; but 
rarely are Mountains seen in such combined 
majesty and grace as here. The rocks are of 
that sort called Primitive by the mineralogists, 
which always arrange themselves in masses of a 
rugged, gigantic character; which ruggedness, 
hovv^ever, is here tempered by a singular airi- 
ness of form, and softness of environment: in 
a climate favorable to vegetation, the gray 
cliff, itself covered with lichens, shoots-up 
through a garment of foliage or verdure ; and 
white, bright cottages, tree-shaded, cluster 
around the everlasting granite. In fine vicis- 
situde, Beauty alternates with Grandeur: you 
ride through stony hollows, along strait passes, 
traversed by torrents, overhung by high walls 
of rock; now winding amid broken shaggy 
chasms, and huge fragments; now suddenly 
emerging into some emerald valley, where the 
streamlet collects itself into a Lake, and man 
has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems 
as if Peace had established herself in the 
bosom of Strength. 

"To Peace, however, in this vortex of exist- 
ence can the Son of Time not pretend: still 
less if some Specter haunt him from the Past ; 
and the Future is wholly a Stygian Darkness, 
specter-bearing. Reasonably might the Wan- 
derer exclaim to -himself : Are not the gates of 
this world's. Happiness inexorably shut against 
thee; hast thou a hope that is not mad? 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 179 

Nevertheless, one may still murmur audibly, 
or in the original Greek, if that suit thee bet- 
ter: 'Whoso can look on death will start at no 
shadows. ' 

"From such meditations is the Wanderer's 
attention called outward; for now the Valley 
closes-in abruptly, intersected by a huge 
mountain mass, the stony water-worn ascent 
of which is not to be accomplished on horse- 
back. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again 
lifted into the evening sunset light ; and cannot 
but pause, and gaze round him, some moments 
there. An upland irregular expanse of wold, 
where valleys in complex branchings are sud- 
denly or slowly arranging their descent toward 
every quarter of the sky. The mountain- 
ranges are beneath your feet, and folded to- 
gether: only the loftier summits look down 
here and there as on a second plain ; lakes also 
lie clear and earnest in their solitude. No 
trace of man now visible; unless indeed it were 
he wdio fashioned that little visible link of 
Highway, here, as would seem, scaling the 
inaccessible to unite Province with Province. 
But sunv/ards, lo you! how it towers sheer up, 
a world of Mountains, the diadem and center 
of the mountain region! A hundred and a 
hundred savage peaks in the last light of Day; 
all glowing, of gold and amethyst, like giant 
spirits of the wilderness; there in their silence, 
in their solitude, even as on the night when 
Noah's Deluge first dried! Beautiful, nay 
solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wan- 
derer. He gazed over those stupendous masses 



180 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

with wonder, almost with longing desire; 
never till this hour had he known Nature, that 
she was One, that she was his Mother and 
divine. And as the ruddy glow was fading 
into clearness in the skj^ and the Sun had now 
departed, a murmur of Eternity and Immens- 
ity, of Death and of Life, stole through his 
soul ; and he felt as if Death and Life were 
one, as if the Earth were not dead, as if the 
Spirit of the Earth had its throne in that splen- 
dor, and his own spirit were therewith holding 
communion. 

"The spell was broken by a sound of car- 
riage-wheels. Emerging from the hidden 
Northward, to sink soon into the hidden South- 
ward, came a gay Barouche-and-four: it was 
open; servants and postilions wore wedding- 
favors; that happy pair, then, had found each 
other, it was their marriage evening! Few 
moments brought them near: Du Himmel! It 
was Herr Towgood and — Blumine! With 
slight unrecognizing salutation they passed 
me; plunged down amid the neighboring 
thickets, onward, to Heaven, and to England; 
and I, in my friend Richter's words, I re- 
mained alone, behind them, with the Night." 

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, 
here might be the place to insert an observa- 
tion, gleaned long ago from the great Clothes- 
Volume, where it stands with quite other in- 
tent: "Some time before Small-pox was extir- 
pated," says the Professor, "there came a new 
malady of the spiritual sort on Europe : I mean 
the epidemic, now endemical, of Vievv^- hunting. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 181 

Poets of old date, being" privileged with Senses, 
had also enjoyed external Nature; but chiefly 
as we enjoy the cr^^stal cup which holds good 
or bad liquor for us; that is to say, in silence, 
or with slight incidental commentary; never, 
as I compute, till after the Sorrows of Werter, 
was there man found who would say: Come 
let us make a Description! Having drunk the 
liquor, come let us eat the glass! Of which 
endemic the Jenner is unhappily still to seek. " 
Too true! 

We reckon it more important to remark that 
the Professor's Wanderings, so far as his sto- 
ical and cynical envelopment admits us to clear 
insight, here first take their permanent charac- 
ter, fatuous or not. That Basilisk-glance of 
the Barouche-and-four seems to have withered 
up what little remnant of a purpose may have 
still lurked in him ; Life has become wholly a 
dark labyrinth ; wherein, through long years, 
our Friend, flying from specters, has to Istum- 
ble about at random, and naturally with more 
haste than progress. 

Foolish were it in us to attempt following 
him, even from afar, in this extraordinary 
world-pilgrimage of his; the simplest record of 
which, v/ere clear record possible, would fill 
volumes. Hopeless is the obscurity, unspeak- 
able the confusion. Pie glides from country to 
country, from condition to condition; vanish- 
ing and re-appearing, no man can calculate 
how or where. Through all quarters of the 
Vv'orld he wanders, and apparently through all 
circles of society. If in any scene^ perhaps 



182 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

difficult to fix geographically, he settles for a 
time, and forms connections, be sure he will 
snap them abruptly asunder. Let him sink 
out of sight as Private Scholar {Privatisirender)^ 
living by the grace of God in some European 
capital, you may next find him as Hadjee in 
the neighborhood of Mecca. It is an inexpli- 
cable Phantasmagoria, capricious, quick-chang- 
ing; as if our Traveler, instead of limbs and 
highways, had transported himself by some 
wishing-carpet, or Fortunatus' Hat. The 
whole, too, imparted emblematically, in dim 
multifarious tokens (as that collection of 
Street-Advertisements) ; with only some touch 
of direct historical notice sparingly inter- 
spersed: little light-islets in the world of haze! 
So that, from this point, the Professor is 
more of an enigma than ever. In figurative 
language, we might say he becomes, not, in- 
deed, a spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. 
Fact unparalleled in Biography : The river of 
his History, which we have traced from its 
tiniest fountains, and hoped to see flow on- 
ward, with increasing current, into the ocean, 
here dashes itself ov^r that terrific Lover's 
Leap; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, flies 
wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray! Low 
down it, indeed, collects again into pools and 
plashes; yet only at a great distance, and with 
difficulty, if at all, into a general stream. To 
cast a glance into certain of those pools and 
plashes, and trace whither they run, must, for 
a chapter or two, form the limit of our en- 
deavor. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 183 

For which end doubtless those direct histori- 
cal Notices, where they can be met with, are 
the best. Nevertheless, of this sort, too, there 
occurs much, which, with our present light, it 
were questionable to emit. Teufelsdrockh, 
vibrating everywhere between the highest and 
the lowest levels, comes into contact with pub- 
lic History itself. For example, those conver- 
sations and relations with illustrious Persons, 
as Sultan Mahmoud, the Emperor Napoleon, 
and others, are they not as yet rather of a dip- 
lomatic character than of a biographic? The 
Editor, appreciating the sacredness of crowned 
heads, nay, perhaps suspecting the possible 
trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will eschew 
this province for the present; a new time m.ay 
bring new insight and a different duty. 

If we ask now, not, indeed, with what ulte- 
rior Purpose, for there was none, yet with what 
immediate outlooks; at all events, in what 
mood of mind, the Professor undertook and 
prosecuted this world- pilgrimage, — the answer 
is more distinct than favorable. "A nameless 
Unrest," says he, "urged me forward; to 
which the outward motion was some moment- 
ary lying solace. Whither should I go? My 
Loadstars were blotted out ; in that canopy of 
grim fire shone no star. Yet forward must I ; 
the ground burnt under me ; there was no rest 
for the sole of my foot. I was alone, alone ! 
Ever, too, the strong inward longing shaped 
Fantasms for itself: toward these, one after 
the other, must I fruitlessly wander. A feel- 
ing I had, that for my fever-thirst there was 



184 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and must be somewhere a healing Fountain. 
To many fondly imagined Fountains, the 
Saints' Wells of these days, did I pilgrim ; to 
great Men, to great Cities, to great Events; 
but found there no healing. In strange coun- 
tries, as in the well-known ; in savage deserts, 
as in the press of corrupt civilization, it was 
ever the same : how could your Wanderer es- 
cape from — his own Shadow? Nevertheless, 
still Forward ! I felt as if in a great haste ; to 
do I saw not what. From the depths of my 
own heart, it called to me. Forward! The 
winds and the streams, and all Nature sound- 
ed to me, Forward! Ach Gott^ I was even, 
once for all, a Son of Time." 

From which it is not clear that the internal 
Satanic School was still active enough? He 
says elsewhere: ''The Enchiridion of Epicteius 
I had ever with me, often as my sole rational 
companion; and regret to mention that the 
nourishment it yielded was trifling." Thou 
foolish Teuf elsdrockh ! How could it else? 
Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand 
thus much: The end of Man is an Action, 
and not a Thought, though it were the noblest? 

"How I lived?" writes he once: "Friend, 
hast thou considered the 'rugged all-nourishing 
Earth,' as Sophocles well names her; how she 
feeds the sparrow on the house-top, much more 
her darling man? While thou stirrest and liv- 
est, thou hast a probability of victual. My 
breakfast of tea has been cooked by a Tartar 
woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped 
her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 185 

roasted wild-eg-gs in the sand of Sahara; I 
have awakened in Paris Estrapades and Vienna 
Malzleins, with no prospect of breakfast beyond 
elemental liquid. That I had my Living to 
seek saved me from Dying, — by suicide. In 
our busy Europe, is there not an everlasting 
demand for Intellect, in the chemical, mechan- 
ical, political, religious, educational, commer- 
cial departments? In Pagan countries, cannot 
one write Fetiches? Living! Little knowest 
thou what alchemy is in an inventive Soul ; 
how, as with its little finger, it can create pro- 
vision enough for the body (of a Philosopher) ; 
and then, as with both hands, create quite 
other than provision ; namely, specters to tor- 
ment itself withal. " 

Poor Teuf elsdrockh ! Flying with Hunger 
always parallel to him; and a whole Infernal 
Chase in his rear; so that the countenance of 
Hunger is comparatively a friend's! Thus 
must he, in a temper, of ancient Cain, or of the 
modern Wandering Jew — save only that he 
feels himself not guilty and but suffering the 
pains of guilt, — wend to and fro with aimless 
speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface 
of the Earth (by footprints), write his Sorrows 
of Teuf elsdrockh; even as the great Goethe, in 
passionate words, had to write his Sorrows of 
Werter, before the spirit freed herself, and he 
could become a Man. Vain truly is the hope 
of your swiftest Runner to escape **from his 
own shadow!" Nevertheless, in these sick 
days, when the Born of Heaven first descries 
himself (about the age of twenty) in a world 



186 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

such as ours, richer than usual in two things, 
in Truths grown obsolete, and Trades grown 
obsolete — what can the fool think but that it 
is all a Den of Lies, wherein whoso will not 
speak Lies and act Lies, must stand idle and 
despair? Whereby it happens that, for your 
nobler minds, the publishing of some such 
Work of Art, in one or the other dialect, be- 
comes almost a necessity. For what is it 
properly but an Altercation with the Devil, 
before you begin honestly Fighting him? Your 
Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George, 
in verse and in prose, and copiously otherwise 
your Bonaparte represents his Sorrows of Na- 
poleon Opera, in an all too stupendous style; 
with music of cannon volleys and murder 
shrieks of a world; his stage-lights are the fires 
of Conflagration; his rhyme and recitative are 
the tramp of embattled Hosts and the sound of 
falling Cities. — Happier is he who, like our 
Clothes- Philosopher, can write such matter, 
since it must be written, on the insensible 
Earth, with his shoe-soles only and also sur- 
vive the writing thereof! , 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 18T 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE EVERLASTING NO. 

Under the strange nebulous envelopment, 
wherein our Professor has now shrouded him- 
self, no doubt but his spiritual nature is never- 
theless progressive, and growing; for how can 
the "Son of Time," in any case, stand still? 
We behold him, through those dim years, in 
a state of crisis, of transition; his made Pil- 
grimings, and general solution into aimless 
Discontinuity, what is all this but a mad Fer- 
mentation; wherefrom, the fiercer it is, the 
clearer product will one day evolve itself? 

Such transitions are ever full of pain ; thus 
the Eagle when he moults is sickly; and, to 
attain his new beak, must harshly dash-off the 
old one upon rocks. What Stoicism soever our 
Wanderer, in his individual acts and motions, 
may affect, it is clear that there is a hot fever 
of anarchy and misery raging within ; corusca- 
tions of which flash out ; as, indeed, how could 
there be others? Have we not seen him dis- 
appointed, bemocked of Destiny, through long 
years? All that the young heart might desire 
and pray for has been denied; nay, as in the 
last worst instance, offered and then snatched 
away. Ever an "excellent Passivity;" but of 
useful, reasonable Activity, essential to the 



188 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

former as Food to Hunger, nothing granted ; 
till at length, in this wild Pilgrimage, he must 
forcibly seize for himself an Activity, though 
useless, unreasonable. Alas, his cup of bitter- 
ness, which had been filling drop by drop, ever 
since that first "ruddy morning" in the Hin- 
terschlag Gymnasium, was at the very lip; 
and then with that poison-drop, of the Tow- 
good- and-Blumine-business, it runs over, and 
even hisses over in a deluge of foam. 

He himself says once, with more justice than 
originality: Man is, properly speaking, based 
upon Hope; he has no other possession but 
Hope; this world of his is emphatically the 
*' Place of Hope." What, then, was our Pro- 
fessor's possession? We see him, for the pres- 
ent, quite shut-out from Hope; looking not 
into the golden orient, but vaguely all round 
into a dim copper firmament, pregnant with 
earthquake and tornado. 

Alas, shut out from Hope, in a deeper sense 
than we yet dream of! For, as he wanders 
wearisomely through this world, he has now 
lost all tidings of another and higher. Full of 
religion, or at least of religiosity, as our Friend 
has since exhibited himself, he hides not that, 
in those days, he was wholly irreligious: 
"Doubt had darkened into Unbelief," says he; 
*' shade after shade grows grimly over your 
soujl, till you have the fixed, starless, Tarta- 
rean black." To such readers as have re- 
flected, what can be called reflecting, on man's 
life, and happily discovered, in contradiction 
to much Profit-and'Loss Philosophy, speculat- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 189 

ive and practical, that Soul is not synonymous 
with Stomach; who understand, therefore, in 
our Friend's words, "that, for man's well-be- 
ing. Faith is properly the one thing needful; 
how, with it, Martyrs, otherwise weak, can 
cheerfully endure the shame and the cross; 
and without it, Worldlings puke up their sick 
existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury:" 
to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral 
n'Bture, the loss of his religious Belief was the 
loss of everything. Unhappy young man! 
All wounds, the crush of long-continued Desti- 
tution, the stab of false Friendship and of false 
Love, all wounds in thy so genial heart, would 
have healed again, had not its life-warmth 
been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in 
his wild way: "Is there no God, then; but at 
best an absentee God, sitting idle, ever since 
the first Sabbath, at the outside of his Uni- 
verse, and seeing it go? Has the word Duty 
no meaning; is what we call Duty no divine 
Messenger and Guide, but a false earthly Fan- 
tasm, made-up of Desire and Fear, of emana- 
tions from the Gallows and from Doctor Gra- 
ham's Celestial-Bed? Happiness of an approv- 
ing Conscience ! Did not Paul of Tarsus, whom 
admiring men have since named Saint, feel 
that he was "the chief of sinners;" and Nero 
of Rome, jocund in spirit {Wohlgemuth), spend 
much of his time in fiddling? Foolish Word- 
monger and Motive-grinder, who in thy Logic- 
mill hast an earthly mechanism for the Godlike 
itself, and wouldst fain grind me out Virtue 
from the husks of Pleasure, — I tell thee, Nay! 



190 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

To the unregenerate Prometheus Vinctus of 
man, it is ever the bitterest aggravation of his 
wretchedness that he is conscious of Virtue, 
that he feels himself the victim not of suffer- 
ing only, but of injustice. What then? Is the 
heroic inspiration we name Virtue but some 
Passion: some bubble of the blood, bubbling in 
the direction others profit by? I know not: 
only this I know. If what thou namest Happi- 
ness be our true aim, then are we all astray. 
With Stupidity and sound Digestion man may 
front much. But what, in these dull unimagi- 
native days, are the terrors of Conscience to the 
diseases of the Liver! Not on Morality, but 
on Cookery, let us build our stronghold; there 
brandishing our frying-pan, as censer, let us 
offer sweet incense to the Devil, and live at 
ease on the fat things he has provided for his 
Elect!" 

Thus has the bewildered Wanderer to stand, 
as so many have done, shouting question after 
question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and 
receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a 
grim Desert, this once fair world of his; 
wherein is heard only the howling of wild- 
beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled 
men; and no Pillar of Cloud by day, and no 
Pillar of Fire by night, any longer g-uides the 
Pilgrim. To such length has the spirit of In- 
quiry carried him. ''But what boots it (was 
thut's)?" cried he: "it is but the common lot 
in this era. Not having come to spiritual 
majority prior to the Siecle de Louis Quinze, and 
not being born purely a Loghead {Dummkopf)y 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 191 

thou hadst no other outlook. The whole world 
is, like thee, sold to Unbelief; their old Tem- 
ples of the Godhead, which for long; have not 
been rainproof, crumble down; and men ask 
now : Where is the Godhead ; our eyes never 
saw him?" 

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild ut- 
terances, to call our Diogenes wicked. Un- 
profitable servants as we all are, perhaps at no 
era of his life was he more decisively the Ser- 
vant of Goodness, the Servant of God, than 
even now when doubting God's existence. 
*'One circumstance I note," says he: "after 
all the nameless woe that Inquiry, which for 
me, what it is not always, was genuine Love 
of Truth, had wrought me, I nevertheless still 
loved Truth, and would bate no jot of my alle- 
giance to her. 'Truth!' I cried, 'though the 
Heavens crush me for following her : no False- 
hood! though a whole Celestial Lubberland 
were the price of Apostacy. ' In conduct it 
was the same. Had a divine Messenger from 
the clouds, or miraculous Handwriting on the 
wall, convincingly proclaimed to me This thou 
shalt do, with what passionate readiness, as I 
often thought, would I have done it, had it 
been leaping into the infernal Fire. Thus, in 
spite of all Motive-grinders, and Mechanical 
Profit-and-Loss Philosophies, with the sick 
ophthalmia and hallucination they had brought 
on, was the Infinite nature of Duty still dimly 
present to me : living without God in the world, 
of God's light I was not utterl}^ bereft; if my 
as yet sealed eyes, v/ith their unspeakable 



192 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

longing, could nowhere see Him, nevertheless 
in my heart He was present, and His heaven- 
written Law still stood legible and sacred 
there. " 

Meanwhile, tinder all these tribulations, and 
temporal and spiritual destitutions, what must 
the Wanderer, in his silent soul, have endured ! 
"The painfuUest feeling," writes he, ''is that 
your own feebleness ( Unkraft) ; ever, as the 
English Milton says, to be weak is the true 
misery. And yet of your Strength there is 
and can be no clear feeling, save by what you 
have prospered in, by what you have done. 
Between vague wavering Capability and fixed 
tindubitable Performance, what a difference! 
A certain inarticulate Self-consciousness dwells 
dimly in us ; which only our Works can render 
articulate and decisively discernible. Our 
Works are the mirror wherein the spirit first 
sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, the 
folly of that impossible Precept, Know thyself; 
till it be translated into this partially possible 
one, Know what thou canst work at. 

"But for me, so strangly unprosperous had I 
been, the net-result of my Workings amounted 
as yet simply to — Nothing. How then could I 
believe in my Strength, when there was as yet 
no mirror to see it in? Ever did this agitating, 
yet, as I now perceive, quite frivolous ques- 
tion, remain to me insoluble: Hast thou a cer- 
tain Faculty, a certain Worth, such even as the 
most have not; or art thou the completest Dul- 
lard of these modern times? Alas, the fearful 
Unbelief is unbelief in yourself; and how 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 193 

could I believe? Had not my first, last Faith 
in m3^self, when even to me the Heavens 
seemed laid open, and I dared to love, been all 
too cruelly belied? The Speculative Mystery of 
Life grew ever more mysterious to me: neither 
in the practical Mystery had I made the slight- 
est progress, but been everywhere buffeted, 
foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A feeble 
unit in the middle of a threatening Infinitude, 
I seemed to have nothing given me but eyes, 
whereby to discern my own wretchedness. In- 
visible yet impenetrable walls, as of Enchant- 
ment, divided me from all living: was there, in 
the wide world, any true bosom I could press 
trustfully to mine ! O Heaven, No, there was 
none! I kept a lock upon my lips: why should 
I speak much with that shifting variety of so- 
called Friends, in whose withered, vain and 
too-hungry souls Friendship was but an incred- 
ible tradition? In such cases, your resource 
is to talk little, and that little mostly from the 
Newspapers. Now when I look back, it was a 
strange isolation I then lived in. The men 
and women around me, even speaking with 
me, were but Figures; I had, practically, for- 
gotten that they were alive, that they were not 
merely automatic. In the midst of their 
crowded streets and assemblages, I walked 
solitary; and (except as it was my own heart, 
not another's, that I kept devouring) savage 
also, as the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort 
it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have 
fancied myself tempted and tormented of the 
Devil: for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, 

13 Sartor Beeartu3 



194 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

though only diabolic Life, were more fright- 
ful: but in our age of Down-pulling and Dis- 
belief, the very Devil has been pulled down, 
you cannot so much as believe in a Devil, To 
me the Universe was all void of Life, of Pur- 
pose, of Volition, even of Hostility; it was one 
huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, roll- 
ing on, in its dead indifference, to grind me 
limb from limb. O, the vast, gloomy, solitary. 
Golgotha, and Mill of Death! Why was the 
Living banished thither companionless, con- 
scious? Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless 
the Devil is your God?" 

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might 
not, moreover, as the worst aggravation to 
them, the iron constitution even of a Teufels- 
drochk threaten to fail? We conjecture that 
he has known sickness; and in spite of his 
locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the 
chronic sort. Hear this, for example: '*How 
l^eautiful to die of broken-heart, on Paper! 
Quite another thing in practice ; every window 
of your Feeling, even of your Intellect, as it 
were, begrimed and mud-bespattered, so that 
no pure ray can enter ; a whole Drugshop in 
your inwards; the fordone soul drowming 
slowly in quagmires of Disgust!** 

Putting all which external and internal mis- 
eries together, may we not find in the follow- 
ing sentences, quite in our Professor's still 
vein, significance enough? **From Suicide a 
certain aftershine (Nachschein) of Christianity 
withheld me : perhaps also a certain indolence 
of character; for, was not that a remedy I had 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 195 

at any time within reach? Often, however, 
was there a question present to me : Should 
some one now, at the turning of that corner, 
blow thee suddenly out of Space, into the other 
World, or other No- world, by pistol-shot, — how 
were it? On which ground, too, I have often, 
in sea-storms and sieged cities and other 
death-scenes, exhibited an imperturbability^ 
which passed, falsely enough, for courage. " 

"So had it lasted," concludes the Wanderer, 
"so had it lasted, as in bitter protracted Death- 
agony, through long years. The heart within 
me, unvisited by any heavenly dew-drop, was 
smioldering in sulphurous, slow-consuming fire. 
Almost since earliest memory I had shed no 
tear; or once only when I, murmuring half- 
audibly, recited Faust's Death-song, that wild 
Selig der den er im Siege sglanze fi?idet (Happy 
whom he finds in Battle's splendor), and 
thought that of this last Friend even I was not 
forsaken, that Destiny itself could not doom 
roe not to die. Having no hope, neither had I 
any definite fear, were it of Man or of Devil: 
nay, I often felt as if it might be solacing, 
could the Arch-Devil himself, though in Tar- 
tarean terrors, but rise to me, that I might tell 
him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely 
enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pin- 
ing fear; tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehen- 
sive of I knew not what : it seemed as if all 
things in the Heavens above and the Earth 
beneath would hurt me ; as if the Heavens and 
the Earth were but boundless jaws of a devour- 



196 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ing monster, wherein, I, palpitating, waited to 
"be devoured. 

"Full of such humor, and perhaps the mis- 
erablest man in the whole French Capital or 
Suburbs, was I, one sultry Dog-day, after much 
perambulation, toiling along the dirty little 
Rue Sai?it-Thomas de r Enfer^ among civic rub- 
bish enough, in a close atmosphere, and over 
pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's Furnace; 
whereby doubtless my spirits were little 
cheered; when, all at once there rose a 
Thought in me, and I asked myself: *What 
art thou afraid of? Wherefore, like a coward, 
dost thou forever pip and whimper, and go 
cowering and trembling? Despicable biped! 
what is the sum total of the worst that lies 
before thee? Death? Well, Death; and say 
the pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil 
and Man may, will or can do against thee ! 
Hast thou not a heart, canst thou not suffer 
whatsoever it be ; and, as a Child of Freedom, 
though outcast, trample Tophet itself under thy 
feet, while it consumes thee? Let it come, 
then; I will meet it and def)'- it!' And as I so 
thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over 
my whole soul; and I shook base Fear away 
from me forever. I was strong, of unknown 
strength ; a spirit, almost a god. Ever from 
that time, the temper of my misery was 
changed ; not Fear or whining Sorrow was it, 
but Indignation and grim fire-eyed Defiance. 

"Thus had the Everlasting No (das ewige 
Nein) pealed authoritatively through all the 
recesses of my Being, of my Me; and then was 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 197 

it that my whole Me stood up, in native God- 
created majesty, and with emphasis recorded 
its Protest. Such a Protest, the most import- 
ant transaction in Life, may that same Indig- 
nation and Defiance, in a psychological point 
of view, be fitly called. The Everlasting No 
had said: 'Behold, thou art fatherless, out- 
cast, and the Universe is mine (the Devil's) ;' 
to which my whole Me now made answer: 'I 
am not thine, but Free, and forever hate thee!' 
''It is from this hour that I incline to date 
my Spiritual New-birth, or Baphometic Fire- 
baptism ; perhaps I directly thereupon began 
to be a Man." 



198 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CENTER OF INDIFFERENCE. 

Though, after this "Baphometic Fire-bap- 
tism" of his our Wanderer signifies that his 
Unrest was but increased ; as indeed, "Indig- 
nation and Defiance," especially against things 
in general, are not the most peaceable inmates: 
yet can the Psychologist surmise that it was 
no longer a quite hopeless Unrest; that hence- 
forth it had at least a fixed center to revolve 
round. For the fire-baptized soul, long so 
scathed and thunder-driven, here feels its own 
Freedom, which feeling is its Baphometic Bap- 
tism; the citadel of its whole kingdom it has 
thus gained by assault, and will keep inexpug- 
nable; outward from which the remaining 
dominions, not indeed without hard battling, 
will doubtless by degrees be conquered and 
pacificated. Under another figure, we might 
say, if in that great moment, in the Rue Sai?it- 
Thomas de rE7ifer, the old inward Satanic 
School was not yet thrown out of doors, it 
received peremptory judicial notice to quit; — 
whereby, for the rest, its howl-chantings, 
Ernulphus-cursing, and rebellious gnashings of 
teeth, might, in the meanwhile, become only 
the more tumuultous, and difficult to keep 
secret. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 199 

Accordingly, if we scrutinize these Pilgrim- 
ings well, there is perhaps discernible hence- 
forth a certain incipient method in their mad- 
ness. Not wholly as a Specter does Teufels- 
drockh now storm through the world ; at worst 
as a specter-fighting Man, nay who will one 
day be a Specter-queller. If pilgriming rest- 
lessly to so many "Saints' Wells," and ever 
without quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless 
finds little secular wells, whereby from time to 
time some alleviation is ministered. In a 
word, he is now, if not ceasing, yet intermit- 
ting to ' ' eat his own heart ; ' ' and clutches round 
him outwardly on the Not-me for wholesomer 
food. Does not the following glimpse exhibit 
him in a much more natural state? 

"Towns also and Cities, especially the 
ancient, I failed not to look upon with interest. 
How beautiful to see thereby, as through a 
long vista, into the remote Time ; to have, as 
it were, an actual section of almost the earliest 
Past brought safe into the Present, and set 
before your eyes! There, in that old City, 
was a live ember of Culinary Fire put down, 
say only two thousand years ago; and there, 
burning more or less triumphantly, with such 
fuel as the region j^ielded, it has burnt, and 
still burns, and thou thyself seest the very 
smoke thereof. Ah ! and the far more myster- 
ious live ember of Vital Fire was then also put 
down there ; and still miraculously burns and 
spreads; and the smoke and ashes thereof (in 
these Judgment- Halls and Church-yards), and 
its bellows-engines (in these Churches), thou 



200 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Still seest; and its flame, looking out from 
every kind countenance, and every hateful one, 
still warms thee or scorches thee. 

*'Of Man's Activity and Attainment the chief 
results are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in 
Tradition only: such are his Forms of Govern- 
ment, with the Authority they rest on; his 
Customs, or Fashions both of Cloth-habits and 
of Soul-habits; much more his collective stock 
of Handicrafts, the whole Faculty he has 
acquired of manipulating Nature: all these 
things, as indispensible and priceless as they 
are, cannot in any way be fixed under lock and 
key, but must flit, spirit-like, on impalpable 
vehicles, from Father to Son ; if you demand 
sight of them, they are nowhere to be met 
with. Visible Ploughmen and Hammermen 
there have been ever, from Cain and Tubalcain 
downward : but where does your accumulated 
Agricultural, Metallurgic, and other Manufac- 
turing Skill lie warehoused? It transmits 
itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's rays 
(by Hearing and by Vision) ; it is a thing aeri- 
form, impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In 
like manner, ask me not, where are the Laws; 
where is the Government? In vain wilt thou 
go to Schonbrunn, to Downing Street, to the 
Palais Bourbon : thou findest nothing there but 
brick or stone houses, and some bundles of 
Papers tied with tape. Where, then, is that 
same cunningly-devised almighty Government 
of theirs to be laid hands on? Everywhere, 
yet nowhere : seen only in its works, this too 
is a thing aeriform, invisible; or if you will, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 201 

mystic and miraculous. So spiritual {geistig) is 
our whole daily Life : all that we do springs out 
of Mystery, Spirit, invisible Force ; only like a 
little Cloud-image, or Armida's Palace, air- 
built, does the Actual body itself forth from 
the great m^ystic Deep. 

"Visible and tangible products of the Past, 
again, I reckon-up to the extent of three: 
Cities, with their Cabinets and Arsenals ; then 
tilled Fields, to either or to both of which 
divisions Roads with their Bridges may belong; 
and thirdly — Books. In which third truly, the 
last invented, lies a worth far surpassing that 
of the two others. Wondrous indeed is the 
virtue of a true Book. Not like a dead city of 
stones, yearly crumbling, yearly needing 
repair ; more like a tilled field, but then a spir- 
itual field : like a spiritual tree, let me rather 
say, it stands from year to year, and from age 
to age (we have Books that already number 
some hundred-and-fifty human ages) ; and 
yearly comes its new produce of leaves (Com- 
mentaries, Deductions, Philosophical, Political 
Systems ; or were it only Sermons, Pamphlets, 
Journalistic Essays) every one of which is 
talismanic and thaumaturgic, for it can pur- 
suade men. O thou who art able to write a 
book, which once in the two centuries or oftener 
there is a man gifted to do, envy not him whom 
they name City-builder, and inexpressibly pity 
him whom they name Conquerer or City- 
burner! Thou too art a Conquerer and Victor; 
but of the true sort, namely over the Devil: 
thou too hast built what will outlast all marble 

U Sartor Eesartus 



202 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and metal, and be a wonder bringing City of 
the Mind, a Temple and Seminary and Pro- 
phetic Mount, whereto all kindreds of the 
Earth will pilgrim. — Fool! why journeyest 
thou wearisomely, in thy antiquarian fervor, 
to gaze on the stone pyramids of Geeza, or the 
■clay ones of Sacchara? These stand there, as 
I can tell thee, idle and inert, looking over the 
Desert, foolishly enough, for the last three 
thousand years, but canst thou not open thy 
Hebrew Bible, then, or even Luther's Version 
thereof?" 

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance 
not in Battle, yet on some Battle-field which, 
we soon gather, must be that of Wagram ; so 
that here, for once, is a certain approximation 
to distinctness of date. Omitting much, let us 
impart what follows: 

"Horrible enough! A whole Marchfield 
strewed with shell-splinters, cannon-shot, 
ruined tumbrils, and dead men and horses; 
stragglers still remaining not so much as 
buried. And those red mold heaps : ay, there 
lie the Shells of Men, out of which all the Life 
and Virtue has been blown : and now are they 
swept together, and crammed-down out of 
sight, like blown Egg-shells! — Did Nature, 
when she bade the Donau bring down his mold- 
cargoes from the Carinthian and Carpathian 
Heights, and spread them out here into the 
softest, richest level, — intend thee, O March- 
field, for a corn-bearing Nursery, whereon her 
children might be nursed; or for a Cockpit, 
■wherein they might the more commodiously be 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 203 

throttled and tattered? Were thy three broad 
Highways, meeting here from the ends of 
Europe, made for Ammunition- wagons, then? 
Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds but so many 
ready-built Casemates, wherein the house of 
Hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with 
artillery be battered? Konig Ottokar, amid 
yonder hillocks, dies under Rodolf's truncheon; 
here Kaiser Franz falls a-swoon under Napo- 
leon's: within which five centuries, to omit the 
others, how has thy breast, far Plain, been 
defaced and defiled! The greensward is torn- 
up and trampled-down ; man's fond care of it, 
his fruit-trees, hedge-rows, and pleasant 
dwellings, blown-away with gunpowder; and 
the kind seedfieldlies a desolate, hideous Place 
of Skulls. — Nevertheless, Nature is at work; 
neither shall these Powder-Devilkins with 
their utmost devilry gainsay her; but all that 
gore and carnage will be shrouded-in, absorbed 
into manure; and next year the Marchfield will 
be green, nay greener. Thrifty, unwearied 
Nature, ever out of our great waste educing 
some little profit of thy own, — how dost thou, 
from the very carcass of the Killer, bring Life 
for the Living! 

"What, speaking in quite unofficial language, 
is the net-purport and upshot of war? To my 
own knowledge, for example, there dwell and 
toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, 
usually some five hundred souls. From these, 
by certain 'Natural Enemies' of the French, 
there are successfully selected, duing the 
French war, say thirty able-bodied men : Dum- 



204 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

drudge, at her own expense, has suckled and 
nursed them: she has, not without difficulty 
and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even 
trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, 
another build, another hammer, and the weak- 
est can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. 
Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swear- 
ing, they are selected ; all dressed in red ; and 
shipped away, at the public charges, some two 
thousand miles, or say only to the south of 
Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to 
that same spot, in the south of Spain, are thirty 
similar French artisans, from a French Dum.- 
drudge, in like manner wending : till at length, 
after infinite effort, the two parties come into 
actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands front- 
ing Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. 
Straight- way the word 'Fire!' is given: and 
they blow the souls out of one another; and in 
place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world 
has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, 
and anew shed tears for. Had these men any 
quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the small- 
est! They lived far enough apart; were the 
entirest strangers; nay, in so wide a Universe, 
there was even, unconsciously, by Commerce, 
some mutual helpfulness between them. How 
then? Simpleton! their Governors had fallen 
out; and instead of shooting one another, had 
the cunning to make these poor blockheads 
shoot. — Alas, so is it in Deutschland, and hith- 
erto in all other lands; still as of old, 'what 
devilry soever Kings do, the Greeks must pay 
the piper!' — In that fiction of the English 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 205 

SmoUet, it is true, the final Cessation of War 
is perhaps prophetically shadowed forth ; where 
the two Natural Enemies, in person, take each 
a Tobacco-pipe, filled with Brimstone; light the 
same, and smoke in one another's faces, till the 
weaker gives in; but from such predicted 
Peace-Era, what blood-filled trenches, and con- 
tentious centuries, may still divide us!" 

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid 
intervals, look away from his own sorrows, 
over the many-colored world, and pertinently 
enough note what is passing there. We may 
remark, indeed, that for the matter of spiritual 
culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few periods 
of his life were richer than this. Internally, 
there is the most momentous instructive Course 
of Practical Philosophy, with Experiments, 
going on ; toward the right comprehension of 
which his Peripatetic habits, favorable to Med- 
itation, might help him rather than hinder. 
Externally, again, as he wanders to and fro, 
there are, if for the longing heart little sub- 
stance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough: 
in these so boundless Travels of his, granting 
that the Satanic School was even partially kept 
down, what an incredible knowledge of our 
Planet, and its Inhabitants and their Works, 
that it to say, of all knowable things, might 
not Teufelsdrockh acquire! 

"I have read in most Public Libraries," says 
he, *' including those of Constantinople and 
Samarcand: in most Colleges, except the 
Chinese Mandarin ones, I have studied, or seen 
that there Vsras no studying. Unknown 



206 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Languages have I oftenest gathered from their 
natural repertory, the Air, by my organ of 
Hearing; Statistics, Geographies, Topograph- 
ies came, through the Eye, almost of their 
own accord. The ways of Man, how he seeks 
food, and warmth, and Protection for himself, 
in most regions, are ocularly known to me. 
Like the great Hadrian, I meted-out much of 
the terraqueous Globe with a pair of Compasses 
that belonged to myself only. 

"Of great Scenes why speak? Three sum- 
mer days, I lingered reflecting, and even com- 
posing [dichtete), by the Pine-chasms of Vau- 
cluse ; and in that clear Lakelet moistened my 
bread. I have sat under the Palm-trees of 
Tadmor; smoked a pipe among the ruins of 
Babylon. The great Wall of China *I have 
seen; and can testify that it is of gray brick, 
coped and covered with granite, and only shows 
second-rate masonry. Great events, also, have 
not I witnessed? Kings sweated-down [mis- 
gemergelt) into Berlin-and-Milan Custom-house 
Officers; the World well won, and the World 
well lost; oftener than once a hundred thou- 
sand individuals shot (by each other) in one 
day. AH kindreds and peoples and nations 
dashed together, and shifted and shoveled into 
heaps, that they might ferment there, and in 
time unite. The birth-pangs of Democracy, 
wherewith convulsed Europe was groaning in 
cries that reached Heaven, could not escape 
me. 

"For great Men have ever had the warmest 
predilection ; and can perhaps boast that few 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 207 

such in this era have wholly escaped me. 
Great Men are the inspired (speaking and act- 
ing) Text of that divine Book of Revelations, 
whereof a chapter is completed from epoch to 
epoch, and by some named History; to which 
inspired Texts your numerous talented men, 
and your innumerable untalented men, are the 
better or worse exegetic Commentaries, and 
wagon-load of too-stupid, heretical or ortho- 
dox, weekly Sermons. For my study, the in- 
spired Texts themselves! Thus did not I, in 
very early days, having disguised me as tavern 
waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, under 
that shady Tree at Treisnitz by the Jena High- 
way; waiting upon the great Schiller and 
greater Goethe ; and hearing what I have not 

forgotten. For " 

But at this point the Editor recalls his 

principle of caution, some time ago laid down, 
and must suppress much. Let not the sacred- 
ness of Laureled, still more, of Crowned Heads, 
be tampered with. Should we, at a future 
day, find circumstances altered, and the time 
come for Publication, then may these glimpses 
into the privacy of the Illustrious be conceded ; 
which for the present were little better than 
treacherous, perhaps traitorous Eavesdrop- 
pings. Of Lord Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, 
Emperor Tarak-wang, and the "White Water- 
roses" (Chinese Carbonari), with their myste- 
ries, no notice here ! Of Napoleon himself we 
shall only, glancing from afar, remark that 
Teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems to have 
been of very varied character. At first we find 



208 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

our poor Professor on the point of being shot 
as a spy ; then taken into private conversation, 
even pinched on the ear, yet presented with 
no money; at last indignantly dismissed, 
almost thrown out of doors, as an **Idealogist." 
"He himself," says the Professor, *'was 
among the completest Idealogists, at least 
Ideopraxists : in the Idea (in der Idee) he lived, 
moved and fought. The man was a Divine 
Missionary, though unconscious of it; and 
preached through the cannon's throat, that 
great doctrine. La carriere ouverte aux talens 
(The Tools to him that can handle them), which 
is our ultimate Political Evangel, wherein 
alone can liberty lie. Madly enough he 
preached, it is true, as Enthusiasts and first 
Missionaries are wont, with imperfect utter- 
ance, amid much frothy rant, yet as articu- 
lately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call 
him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, 
who had to fell unpenetrated forests, and 
battle with innumerable wolves, and did not 
entirely forbear strong liquor, rioting, and 
even theft ; whom, notwithstanding, the peace- 
ful Sower will follow, and, as he cuts the 
boundless harvest, bless." 

More legitimate and decisively authentic is 
Teufelsdrockh's appearance and emergence 
(we know not well whence) in the solitude of 
the North Cape, on that June Midnight. He 
has a ''light-blue Spanish cloak" hanging 
round him, as his "most commodious, princi- 
pal, indeed sole upper-garment;" and stands 
there, on the World-promontory, looking over 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 209 

the infinite Brine, like a little blue Belfry (as 
we figure), now motionless indeed, yet ready, 
if stirred, to ring quaintest changes. 

"Silence as of death," writes he; "for Mid- 
night, even in the Arctic latitudes, has its 
character : nothing but the granite cliffs ruddy- 
tinged, the peaceable gurgle of that slow- 
heaving Polar Ocean, over which in the utmost 
North the great Sun hangs low and lazy, as if 
he too were slumbering. Yet in his cloud-couch 
wrought of crimson and cloth-of-gold ; yet 
does his light stream over the mirror of waters, 
like a tremulous fire-pillar, shooting down- 
ward to the abyss, and hide itself under my 
feet. In such moments. Solitude also is inval- 
uable ; for who would speak, or be looked on, 
when behind him lies all Europe and Africa, 
fast asleep, except the watchmen; and before 
him the silent Immensity, and Palace of the 
Eternal, whereof our Sun is but a porch-lamp? 

"Nevertheless, in this solemn moment comes 
a man, or monster, scrambling from among 
the rock-hollows; and, shaggy, huge as the 
Hyperborean Bear, hails me in Russian 
speech: most probably, therefore, a Russian 
Smuggler. With courteous brevity, I signify 
my indifference to contraband trade, my 
humane intentions, yet strong wish to be pri- 
vate. In vain: the monster, counting doubt- 
less on his superior stature, and minded to 
make sport for himself, or perhaps profit, were 
it with murder, continues to advance; ever 
assailing me with his importunate train-oil 
breath ; and now has advanced, till we stand 

14 



210 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

both on the verge of the rock, the deep Sea 
rippling greedily down below. What argu- 
ment will avail? On the thick Hypoborean, 
cherubic reasoning, seraphic eloquence were 
lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, deftly 
enough, whisk aside one step ; draw out, from 
my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birming- 
ham Horse-pistol, and say, 'Be so obliging as 
retire, Friend (Erziehe sichzuruck^ Fretmd)^ and 
with promptitude!" This logic even the Hy- 
perborean understands: fast enough, with 
apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles off; 
and, except for suicidal as well as homicidal 
purposes, need not return. 

*'Such I hold to be the genuine use of Gun- 
powder: that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, 
if thou be cooler, cleverer than I, if thou have 
more Mind, though all but no Body whatever, 
then canst thou kill me first, and art the taller. 
Hereby, as last, is the Goliath powerless, and 
the David resistless; savage Animalism is 
nothing, inventive Spiritualism is all. 

**With respect to Duels, indeed, I have my 
own ideas. Few things, in this so surprising 
world, strike me with more surprise. Two 
little visual Spectra of men, hovering with 
insecure enough cohesion in the midst of the 
Unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, at any 
rate, very soon,^ — make pause at the distance 
of twelve paces asunder; whirl round; and, 
simultaneously by the cunningest mechanism, 
explode one another into Dissolution ; and off- 
hand become Air, and Non-extant! Deuce on 
it {verdammt)y the little spitfires! — Nay, I 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 211 

think with old Hugo von Trimberg: 'God must 
needs laugh outright, could such a thing be, 
to see his wondrous Mannikins here below.' " 

But amid these specialties, let us not forget 
the great generality, which is our chief quest 
here : How prospered the inner man of Teufels- 
drockh under so much outward shifting? Does 
Legion still lurk in him, though repressed; or 
has he exorcised that Devil's Brood? We can 
answer that the symptoms continue promising. 
Experience is the grand spiritual Doctor; and 
with him Teufelsdrockh has now been long a 
patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. 
Unless our poor Friend belong to the numer- 
ous class of Incurables, which seems not likely, 
some cure will doubtless be effected. We 
should rather say that Legion, or the Satanic 
School, was now pretty well extirpated and 
cast out, but next to nothing introduced in its 
room; whereby the heart remains, for the 
while, in a quiet but no comfortable state. 

"At length, after so much roasting," thus 
writes our Autobiographer, "I was what you 
might name calcined. Pray only that it be 
not rather, as in the more frequent issue, re- 
duced to a caput-?nortuum ! But in any case, by 
mere dint of practice, I had grown familiar 
with many things. Wretchedness was still 
wretched ; but I could not partly see through 
it, and despise it. Which highest mortal, in 
this inane Existence, had I not found a 
Shadow-hunter, or Shadow-hunted; and, when 
I looked through his brave garnitures, miser- 



212 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

able enough? Thy wishes have all been sniffed 
aside, thought I: but what, had they even 
been all granted ! Did not the Boy Alexander 
weep because he had not two Planets to con- 
quer; or a whole Solar System; or after that, 
a whole universe? Ach Gott, when I gazed 
into these Stars, have they not looked down 
on me as if with pity, from their serene spaces ; 
like Eyes glistening with heavenly tears over 
the little lot of man! Thousands of human 
generations, all as noisy as our own, have 
been swallowed up of Time, and there re- 
mains no wreck of the many more ; and Arctu- 
rus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are 
still shining in their courses, clear and young, 
as when the Shepherd first noted them in the 
plain of Shinar. Pshaw ! what is this paltry 
little Dog-cage of an Earth ; what art thou that 
sittest whining there? Thou art still Nothing, 
Nobody: true; but who, then, is Something, 
Somebody? For thee the Family of Man has 
no use; it rejects thee; that art wholly as a 
dissevered limb: so be it; perhaps it is bet- 
ter so!" 

Too heavily laden Teufelsdrockh ! Yet surely 
his bands are loosening; one day he will hurl 
the burden far from him, and bound forth free 
and with a second youth. 

"This," says our Professor, "was the Center 
of Indifference I had now reached ; through 
which whoso travels from the Negative Pole 
to the Positive must necessarily pass." 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 213 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE EVERLASTING YEA. 

"Temptations in the wilderness!" exclaims 
Teufelsdrockh : "Have we not all to be tried 
with such? Not so easily can the old Adam, 
lodged in us by birth, be dispossessed. Our 
Life is compassed round with Necessity; yet 
is the meaning of Life itself no other than 
Freedom, than Voluntary Force: thus have 
we a warfare; in the beginning, especially, 
a hard-fought battle. For the God-given man- 
date, Work thou in Well-doing, lies mysteri- 
ously written, in Promethean Prophetic Char- 
acters, in our hearts; and leaves us no rest, 
night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed ; 
till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, 
acted Gospel of Freedom. And as the clay- 
given mandate. Eat thou and be filled, at the 
same time persuasively proclaims itself through 
every nerve, — must not there be a confusion, 
a contest, before the better Influence can 
become the upper? 

"To me nothing seems more natural than 
that the Son of Man, when such God-given 
mandate first propheticall}^ stirs v/ithin him, and 
the Clay must now be vanquished or vanquish, 
— should be carried of the spirit into grim Sol- 
itudes, and there fronting the Tempter do 



214 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

grimmest battle with him; defiantly setting 
him at naught, till he yield and fly. Name it 
as we choose : with or without visible Devil, 
whether in the natural Desert of rocks and 
sands, or in the populous moral Desert of self- 
ishness and baseness, — to such Temptation are 
we called. Unhappy if we are not ! Unhappy 
if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine 
handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subdu- 
ing, in true sun-splendor; but quivers dubious- 
ly amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull 
pain, in darkness under earthly vapors ! — Our 
Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic 
Century ; our Forty Days are long years of suf- 
fering and fasting; nevertheless, to these also 
comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if 
not Victory, yet the consciousness of Battle, 
and the resolve to persevere therein while 
life or faculty is left. To me also, entangled 
in the enchanted forests, demon-peopled, dole- 
ful of sight and of sound, it was given, after 
weariest wonderings, to work out my way into 
the higher sunlit slopes — of that Mountain 
which has no summit, or whose summit is in 
Heaven only!" 

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious 
figure ; as figures are, once for all, natural to 
him: "Has not thy Life been that of most 
sufficient men {tachtige?t Manner) thou hast 
known in this generation? An outflush of 
foolish young Enthusiasm, like the first fallow- 
crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable 
herbs: this all parched away, under the 
Droughts of practical and spiritual Unbelief, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 215 

as Disappointment, in thought and act, often 
repeated gave rise to Doubt, and Doubt grad- 
ually settled into Denial! If I have had a 
second-crop, and now see the perennial green- 
sward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which 
defy all Drought (and Doubt) ; herein too, be 
the Heavens praised, I am not without exam- 
ples, and even exemplars. ' ' 

So that, for Teufelsdrockh also, there has 
been a "glorious revolution" these mad 
shadow-hunting and shadow-hunted Pilgrim- 
ings of his were but some purifying "Tempta- 
tion in the Wilderness," before his apostolic 
work (such as it was) could begin; which 
Temptation is now happily over, and the Devil 
once more worsted! Was "that high moment 
in the Rue de rEnfer,'" then properly the 
turning-point of the battle; when the Fiend 
said. Worship me or be torn in shreds; and 
was answered valiantly with an Apage Satana? 
'. — Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou hadst 
told thy singular story in plain words ! But it is 
fruitless to look there, in those Paper-bags, for 
such. Nothing but innuendoes, figurative 
crotchets : a typical Shadow, fitfully wavering, 
prophetico-satiric; no clear logical Picture. 
"How paint to the sensual eye," asks he once, 
"what passes in the Holy-of-Holies of Man's 
Soul ; in what words, known to these profane 
times, speak even afar-off of the unspeakable? 
We ask in turn : why perplex these times, pro- 
fane as they are, with needless obscurity by 
omission and by commission? Not mystical 
only is our Professor, but whimsical ; and in- 



216 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

volves himself, now more than ever, in eye- 
bewildering chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, 
here faithfully imparted, our more gifted 
readers must endeavor to combine for their 
own behoof. 

He says: "The hot Harmattan wind had 
raged itself out ; its howl went silent within 
me; and the long-deafened soul could now 
hear. I paused in my wild wanderings ; and 
sat me down to wait, and consider ; for it was 
as if the hour of change drew nigh. I seemed 
to surrender, to renounce utterly, and say: 
Fly, then, false shadows of Hope; I will chase 
you no more, I will believe you no more. And 
ye too, haggard specters of Fear, I care not 
for you ; ye too are all shadows and a lie. Let 
me rest here : for I am way-weary and life- 
weary; I will rest here, were it but to die: to 
die or to live is alike to me ; alike insignifi- 
cant. " — And again: '*Here, then, as I lay in 
that Center of Indifference; cast doubtless by 
benignant upper Influence, into a healing 
sleep, the heavy dreams rolled gradually 
away, and I awoke to a new Heaven and a new 
Earth. The first preliminary moral Act, An- 
nihilation of Self {Selbst-todttmg), had been 
happily accomplished; and my mind's eyes 
were now unsealed, and its hands ungyved, " 

Might we not also conjecture that the follow- 
ing passage refers to his Locality, during this' 
same "healing sleep;" that his Pilgrim-staff 
lies cast aside here, on "the high-table-land;" 
and indeed that the repose is already taking 
wholesome effect on him? If it were not that 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 217 

the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, 
even of levity, than we could have expected! 
However in Teufelsdrockh, there is always the 
strangest Dualism : light dancing, with guitar 
music, will be going on in the fore-court, while 
by fits from within comes the faint whimpering 
of woe and wail. We transcribe the piece 
entire. 

"Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey 
Tent, musing and meditating; on the high 
tableland, in front of the mountains ; over me, 
as roof, the azure Dome, and around me, for 
walls, four azure-flowing curtains, — namely, of 
the Four azure Winds, on whose bottom- 
fringes also I have seen gilding. And then to 
fancy the fair Castles that stood sheltered in 
these Moimtain hollows; with their green 
flower-lawns, and white dames and damosels, 
lovely enough: or better still, the straw-roofed 
Cottages, wherein stood many a Mother baking 
bread, with her children round her: — all hid- 
den and protectingly folded-up in the valley 
folds; yet there and alive, as sure as if I 
beheld them. Or to see, as well as fancy, the 
nine Towns and Villages, that lay round my 
mountain-seat, which, in still weather, were 
wont to speak to me (by their steeple-bells) 
with metal tongue ; and, in almost all weather, 
proclaimed their vitality by repeated Smoke- 
clouds; whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I 
might read the hour of the day. For it was 
the smoke of cookery, as kind housewives at 
morning, midday, eventide, were boiling their 
husband's kettles; and ever a blue pillar rose 



218 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Up into the air, successively or simultaneously, 
from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as 
smoke could say: Such and such a meal is get- 
ting ready here. Not uninteresting ! For you 
have the whole Borough, with all its love- 
makings and scandal-mongeries, contentions 
and contentments, as in miniature, and 
could cover it all with your hat. — If, in my 
wide Wayfarings, I had learned to look into the 
business of the World in its details, here per- 
haps was the place for combining it into gen- 
eral propositions, and deducing inferences 
therefrom. 

"Often also could I see the black Tempest 
marching in anger through the Distance: 
round some Schreckhorn, as yet grim-blue, 
would the eddying vapor gather, and there 
tumultuously eddy, and flow down like a mad 
witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, 
and, in the clear sunbeam, your Schreckhorn 
stood smiling grim-white, for the vapor had 
held snow. How thou fermentest and elabo- 
ratest, in thy great fermenting- vat and labora- 
tory of an Atmosphere, of a World, O Nature! 
— Or what is Nature? Hal why do I not name 
thee God? Art not thou the 'Living Garment 
of God'? O Heavens, is it, in very deed, He, 
then, that ever speaks through thee; that 
lives and loves in thee, that lives and loves 
in me? 

"Fore-shadows, call them rather fore-splen- 
dors, of that Truth, and Beginning of Truths, 
fell mysteriously over my soul. Sweeter than 
Dayspring to the Shipwrecked in Nova Zem- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 219 

bla; ah, like the mother's voice to her little 
child that strays bewildered, weeping, in un- 
known tumults : like soft streamings of celes- 
tial music to my too-exasperated heart, came 
that Evangel. The Universe is not dead and 
demoniacal, a charnel-house with specters; 
but god- like, and my Father's! 

"With other e3^es, too, could I now look upon 
my fellow-man: with an infinite Love, an in- 
finite Pity- Poor, wandering, wayward man! 
Art thou not tried, and beaten with stripes, 
even as I am? Ever, whether thou bear the 
royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, art 
thou not so weary, so heavy-laden; and thy 
Bed of Rest is but a Grave. O my Brother, 
my Brother, why cannot I shelter thee in my 
bosom, and wipe away all tears from thy eyes! 
— truly, the din of many- voiced Life, which, in 
this solitude, with the mind's organ, I could 
hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but 
a melting one ; like inarticulate cries, and sob- 
bings of a dumb creature, which in the ear of 
Heaven are Prayers. The poor Earth, with 
her poor joys, v/as now my needy Mother, not 
my cruel Step-dame; Man with his so mad 
Wants and so mean Endeavors, had become 
the dearer to me; and even for his sufferings 
and his sins, I now first named him Brother. 
Thus was I standing in the porch of that 'Sanc- 
tuary of Sorrow;' by strange, steep ways had 
I too been guided thither; and ere long its 
sacred gates would open, and the Divine 
Depth of Sorrow" lie disclosed to me." 

The Professor says, he here first got eye on 



220 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the Knot that had been strangling him, and 
straightway could unfasten it, and was free. 
"A vain interminable controversy, " writes 
he, "touching what is at present called Origin 
of Evil, or some such thing, arises in every 
soul, since the beginning of the world; and in 
every soul, that would pass from idle Suffering 
into actual Endeavoring, must first be put an 
end to. The most, in our time, have to go 
content with a simple, incomplete enough Sup- 
pression of this controversy; to a few some 
Solution of it is indispensable. In every new 
era, too, such Solution comes out in different 
terms; and ever the Solution of the last 
era has become obsolete, and is found unser- 
viceable. For it is man's nature to change his 
Dialect from century to century; he cannot 
help it though he would. The authentic 
Church-Catechism of our present century has 
not yet fallen into my hands ; meanwhile, for 
my own private behoof, I attempt to elucidate 
the matter so. Man's Unhappiness, as I con- 
strue, comes of his Greatness: it is because 
there is an Infini.te in him, which with all his 
cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite. 
Will the whole Finance Ministers and Uphol- 
sterers and Confectioners of modern Europe 
undertake, in joint-stock company, to make one 
Shoeblack Happy? They cannot accomplish 
it, above an hour or two: for the Shoeblack 
also has a Soul quite other than his Stomach ; 
and would require, if you consider it, for his 
permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply 
his allotment, no more, and no less; God's 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 221 

infinite Universe altogether to himself, therein 
to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast 
as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a Throat 
like that of Ophiuchus: speak not of them; to 
the infinite Shoeblack they are as nothing. 
No sooner is your ocean filled, than he grum- 
"bies that it might have been of better vintage. 
Try him with half of a Universe, of an Omni- 
potence, he sets to quarreling with the propri- 
etor of the other half, and declares himself the 
most maltreated of men. — Always there is a 
black spot in our sunshine, it is even, as I 
said, the Shadow of Ourselves. 

"But the whim we have of Happiness is 
somewhat thus. By certain valuations, and 
averages, of our own striking, we come upon 
some sort of average terrestrial lot ; this we 
fancy belongs to us by nature, and of indefeas- 
ible right, it is simple payment of our wages, 
■of our deserts; requires neither thanks nor 
complaint, only such overplus as there may be 
do we account Happiness; any deficit again is 
Misery. Now consider that we have the valua- 
tion of our own deserts ourselves, and what a 
fund of Self-conceit there is in each of us, — do 
you wonder that the balance should so often 
dip the wrong way, and many a Blockhead cry : 
See there, what a payment; was ever worthy 
gentleman so used! — I tell thee. Blockhead, 
it all comes of thy Vanity; of what thou fan- 
ciest those same deserts of thine to be. Fancy 
that thou deservest to be hanged (as is most 
likely), thou wilt feel it happiness to be only 
shot: fancy that thou deservest to be hanged 



222 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die in 
hemp. 

"So true is it, what I then said, that the 
Fraction of Life can be increased in value not 
so much by inceasing your Numerator as by 
lessening your Denominator. Nay, unless, 
my Algebra deceive me. Unity itself divided 
by Zero will give Infinity. Make thy claim of 
wages a zero, then; thou hast the world under 
thy feet. Well did the Wisest of our time 
write: 'It is only with Renunciation {Efitsagen} 
that Life, properly speaking, can be said to- 
begin. ' 

"I asked myself: What is this that, ever 
since earliest years, thou hast been fretting, 
and fuming, and lamenting and self- torment- 
ing, on account of? Say in is a word: is it not 
because thou art not happy? Because the thou 
(sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently honored, 
nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared- 
for? Foolish soul! What Act of Legislature 
was there that thou shouldest be Hpapy? A 
little while ago thou hadst no right to be at all. 
What if thou wert born and predestined not to^ 
be Happy, but to be Unhappy? Art thou 
nothing other than a Vulture, then, that fliest 
through the Universe seeking after somewhat 
to eat ; and shrieking dolefully because carrion 
enough is not given thee? Close thy Byron; 
open thy Goethe." 

''Es leuchtet 7nir ein, I see a glimpse of it!" 
cries he elsewhere: "there is in man a Higher 
than Love of Happiness: he can do without 
Happiness, and instead thereof find Blessed- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 223 

ness! Was it not to preach forth this same 
Higher that sages and martyrs, the Poet and 
the Priest, in all times, have spoken and 
suffered; bearing testimony, through life and 
through death of the Godlike that is in Man, 
and how in the Godlike only has he Strength 
and Freedom? Which God-inspired Doctrine 
art thou also honored to be taught; O 
Heavens ! and broken with manifold merciful 
Afflictions, even till thou become contrite, and 
learn it! O, thank thy Destiny for these; 
thankfully bear what yet remain : thou hadst 
need of them ; the Self in thee needed to be 
annihilated. By benignant fever-paroxysms is 
Life rooted out the deep-seated chronic Dis- 
ease, and triumphs over Death. On the roar- 
ing billows of Time, thou art not ingulfed, but 
borne aloft into the azure of Eternity. Love 
not Pleasure ; love God. This is the Everlast- 
ing Yea, wherein all contradiction is solved : 
wherein whoso walks and works, it is well with 
him." 

And again: "Small is it that thou canst 
trample the Earth with its injuries under thy 
feet, as old Greek Zeno trained thee : thou canst 
love the Earth while it injures thee, and even 
because it injures thee; for this a Greater than 
Zeno was needed, and he too was sent. Know- 
est thou that 'Worship of Sorrow'? The Tem- 
ple thereof, founded some eighteen centuries 
ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, 
the habitation of doleful creatures: neverthe- 
less, venture forward ; in a low crypt, arched 
out of falling fragments, thou findest the Altar 



224 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

still there, and its sacred Lamp perennially 
burning." 

Without pretending to comment on which 
strange utterances, the Editor will only re- 
mark, that there lies beside them much of a still 
more questionable character; unsuited to the 
general apprehension; nay wherein he him- 
self does not see his way. Nebulous disquisi- 
tions on Religion, yet not without bursts of 
splendor; on the "perennial continuance of 
Inspiration;" on Prophecy; that there are 
"true Priests, as well as Baal-Priests, in our 
ov/n day:" with more of the like sort. We 
select some fractions, by way of finish to this 
farrago. 

"Cease, my much-respected Herr von Vol- 
taire," thus apostrophizes the Professor: "shut 
thy sweet voice ; for the task appointed thee 
seems finished. Sufficiently hast thou demon- 
strated this proposition, considerable or other- 
wise : That the Mythus of the Christian Reli- 
gion looks not in the eighteenth century as it 
did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and- 
thirty quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand 
other quartos and folios, and flying sheets or 
reams, printed before and since on the same 
subject, all needed to convince us of so little! 
But what next? Wilt thou help us to embody 
the divine Spirit of that Religion in a new 
Mythus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our 
Souls, otherwise too like perishing, may live? 
What! thou hast no faculty in that kind? 
Only a torch for burning, no hammer for build- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 225 

ing! Take our thanks, then, and -thyself 

away. 

"Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses 
to me? Or is the God present, felt in my own 
heart, a thing which Herr von Voltaire will 
dispute out of me ; or dispute into me? To the 
'Worship of Sorrow' ascribe what origin and 
genesis thou pleasest, has not that Worship 
originated, and been generated; is it not here? 
Feel it in thy heart, and then say Vvdiether it 
is of God! This is Belief; all else is Opinion, 
— for which latter whoso will, let him worry 
and be worried. " 

"Neither," observes he elsewhere, "shall ye 
tear out one another's eyes, struggling over 
'Plenary Inspiration,' and suchlike; try rather 
tp get a little even Partial Inspiration, each of 
you for himself. One Bible I know, of whose 
Plenary Inspiration doubt is not so much as 
possible: nay with my own eyes I saw the 
God's-Hand writing it: thereof all other Bibles 
are but Leaves, — say, in Picture-Writing to 
assist the weaker faculty." 

Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and 
bring it to an end, let him take the following 
perhaps more intelligible passage: 

"To me, in this our life," says the Professor 
"which is an internecine warfare with the 
Time-spirit, other warfare seems questionable. 
Hast thou in any way a Contention with thy 
brother, I advise thee, think well what the 
meaning thereof is. If thou gauge it to the 
bottom, it is simply this: 'Fellow, see! thou 
art taking more than thy share of Happiness 

15 Sartor Besartus 



226 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

in the world, something from my share: which, 
by the Heavens, thou shalt not; nay I will 
fight thee rather. ' — Alas, and the whole lot to 
be divided in such a beggarly matter, truly a 
*feast of shells,' for the substance has been 
spilled out: not enough to quench one Appe- 
tite ; and the collective human species clutch- 
ing at them! — Can we not, in all such cases, 
rather say: 'Take it, thou too-ravenous indi- 
vidual; take that pitiful additional fraction of 
a share, which I reckoned mine, but which 
thou so wantest; take it with a blessing: 
would to Heaven I had enough for thee!' — If 
Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, 'to a certain ex- 
tent. Applied Christianity,' surely to a still 
greater extent, so is this. We have here not 
a Whole Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, 
namely the Passive half: could we but do it, as 
we can demonstrate it! 

"But indeed Conviction, were it never so ex- 
cellent, is worthless, till it convert itself into 
Conduct. Nay properly Conviction is not pos- 
sible till then; inasmuch as all Speculation is 
by nature endless, formless, a vortex amid vor- 
tices : only by a felt indubitable certainty of 
Experience does it find any center to revolve 
round, and so fashion itself into a system. 
Most true is it, as a wise man teaches us, that 
'Doubt of any sort cannot be removed except 
by Action.' On which ground, too, let him 
who gropes painfully in darkness or uncertain 
light, and prays vehemently that the dawn may 
ripen into day, lay this other precept well to 
heart, which to me was of invaluable service : 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 227 

'Do the duty which lies nearest thee,' which 
thou knowest to be a Duty! Thy second Duty 
will already have become clearer. 

"May we not say, however, that the hour of 
Spiritual Enfranchisement is even this: When 
your Ideal World, wherein the whole man has 
been dimly struggling and inexpressibly lan- 
guishing to work, becomes revealed, and 
thrown open ; and you discover, with amaze- 
ment enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm 
Meister, that your 'America is here or no- 
where'? The Situation that has not its Duty, 
its Ideal, was never yet occupied by man. 
Yes here, in this poor, miserable, hampered, 
despicable Actual, wherein thou even now 
standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal: work 
it out therefrom ; and working, believe, live, 
be free. Fool ! the Ideal is in thyself, the im- 
pp-diment too is in thyself : thy Condition is but 
the stuff thou art to shape that same Ideal out 
of: what matters whether such stuff be of this 
sort, or that, so the Form thou give it be 
heroic, be poetic? O thou that pinest in the 
imprisonment of the Actual, and cries bitterly 
to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and 
create, know this of a truth : the thing thou 
seekest is already with thee, 'here or nowhere,' 
couldst thou only see! 

"But it is with man's Soul as it was with 
Nature ; the beginning of Creation is — Light. 
Till the eye have vision, the whole members 
are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the 
tempest-tost Soul, as once over the v/ild-wel- 
tering Chaos, it is spoken : Let there be Light ! 



228 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Ever to the greatest that has felt such moment, 
is it not miraculous and God-announcing ; even 
as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and 
least. The mad primeval Discord is hushed ; 
the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind 
themselves into separate Firmaments: deep 
silent rock-foundations are built beneath ; and 
the skyey vault with its everlasting Luminaries 
above: instead of a dark wasteful Chaos, we 
have a blooming, fertile heaven-encompassed 
World. 

"I, too, could now say to myself: Be no 
longer a Chaos, but a World, or even World- 
kin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the 
pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, 
produce it, in God's name! 'Tis the utmost 
thou hast in thee : out with it, then. Up, up ! 
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with 
thy whole might. Work while it is called To- 
day; for the Night cometh, wherein no man 
can work. ' ' 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 229 



CHAPTER X. 

PAUSE. 

Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satis- 
factorily as, in such circumstances, might be, 
followed Teufelsdrockh through the various 
successive states and stages of Growth. Entan- 
glement, Unbelief, and almost Reprobation, 
into a certain clearer state of what he himself 
seems to consider as Conversion. "Blame not 
the word," says he; "rejoice rather that such 
a word, signifying such a thing, has come to 
light in our modern Era, though hidden from 
the wisest Ancients. The Old World knew 
nothing of Conversion; instead of an Ecce 
Ho7no, they had only some Choice of Hercules. 
It was a new^-attained progress in the Moral 
Development of man: hereby has the Highest 
come home to the bosoms of the most Limited ; 
what to Plato was but a hallucination, and to 
Socrates a chimera, is now clear and certain to 
your Zinzendorfs, your Wesleys, and the poor- 
est of their Pietists and Methodists." 

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority 
of Teufelsdrockh commences: we are hence- 
forth to see him "work in well-doing," with 
the spirit and clear aims of a Man. He has 
discovered that the Ideal Workshop he so 
panted for is even this same Actual ill-fur- 



230 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nished Workshop he has so long been stum- 
bling in. He can say to himself: "Tools? 
Thou hast no Tools? Why, there is not a Man, 
or a Thing, now alive but has tools. The 
basest of created animalcules, the Spider itself, 
has a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and 
power-loom within its head: the stupidest of 
Oysters has a Papin's-Digester, with stone- 
and-lime house to hold it in; every being that 
can live can do something: this let him do. — 
Tools? Hast thou not a Brain, furnished, fur- 
nishable with some glimmerings of Light ; and 
three fingers to hold a Pen withal? Never 
since Aaron's Rod went out of practice, or 
even before it, was there such a wonder-work- 
ing Tool : greater than all recorded miracles 
have been performed by Pens. For strangly 
in this so solid-seeming World, which never- 
theless is in continual restless flux, it is ap- 
pointed that Sound, to appearance the most 
fleeting, should be the most continuing of all 
things. The Word is well said to be omnipo- 
tent in this world; a man, thereby divine can 
create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise! Speak 
forth what is in thee; what God has given 
thee, what the Devil shall not take away. 
Higher task than that of Priesthood was allot- 
ted to no man: wert thou but the meanest in 
that sacred Hierarchy, is it not honor enough 
therein to spend and be spent? 

"By this Art, which whoso will may sacri- 
legiously degrade into a handicraft, " adds Teu- 
felsdrockh, "have I thenceforth abidden. 
Writings of mine, not, indeed, known as mine 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 231 

(for what am I?), have fallen, perhaps not alto- 
gether void, into the mighty seed-field of Opin- 
ion ; fruits of my unseen sowing, gratifyingly 
meet me here and there. I thank the Heavens 
that I have now found my Calling; wherein, 
with or without perceptible result, I am minded 
diligently to persevere. 

"Nay, how knowest thou," cries he, *'but 
this and the other pregnant Device, now grown 
to be a world-renowned far-working Institu- 
tion ; like a grain of right mustard-seed once 
cast into the right soil, and now stretching-out 
strong boughs to the four winds, for the birds 
of the air to lodge in, — may have been prop- 
erly my doing? Some one's doing, it without 
doubt was; from some Idea, in some single 
Head, it did first of all take beginning: why 
not from some Idea in mine?" Does Teufels- 
drockh here glance at that ''Society for the 
Conservation of Property" [Eigeiithiims-con- 
servirende Gesellschaft), of which so many am- 
biguous notices glide specter- like through 
these inexpressible Paper-bags? "An Institu- 
tion," hints he, "not unsuitable to the wants 
of the time; as, indeed, such sudden extension 
proves; for already can the Society number, 
among its office-bearers or corresponding mem- 
bers, the highest Names, if not the highest 
Persons, in Germany, England, France; and 
contributions, both of money and of medita- 
tion, pour in from all quarters; to, if possible, 
enlist the remaining Integrity of the world, 
and, defensively and with forethought, mar- 
shal it round this Palladium." Does Teufels- 



232 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

drockh mean, then, to give himself out as the 
originator of that so notable Eige^ithums-con- 
servwende ("Owndom-conserving") Gesellschaft ; 
and if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He 
again hints: "At a time when the divine 
Commandment, Thou shalt not steal, wherein 
truly, if well understood, is comprised the 
whole Hebrew Decalogue, with Solon's and 
Lycurgus' Constitutions, Justinian's Pandects, 
the Code Napoleon and all Codes, Catechisms, 
Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that man 
has hitherto devised (and enforced with Altar- 
fire and Gallows-ropes) for his social guidance: 
at a time, I say, when this divine Command- 
ment has all but faded away from the general 
remembrance; and, with little disguise, a new 
opposite Commandment, Thou shalt steal, is 
everywhere promulgated, — it perhaps be- 
hooved, in this universal dotage and deliration, 
the sound portion of mankind to bestir them- 
selves and rally. When the widest and wild- 
est violations of that divine right of Property, 
the only divine right now extant or conceiv- 
able, are sanctioned and recommended by a 
vicious Press, and the world has lived to hear 
it asserted that we have no Property in our 
very Bodies, but only an accidental Possession 
and Life-rent, what is- the issue to be looked 
for? Hangmen and Catchpoles may, by their 
noose-gins and baited fall-traps, keep down the 
smaller sort of vermin ; but what, except per- 
haps some such Universal Association, can pro- 
tect us against whole meat-devouring and man- 
devouring hosts of Boa-constrictors? If, there- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 233 

fore, the more sequestered Thinker have 
wondered, in this privacy, from what hand 
that perhaps not ill-written Program in the 
Public Journals, with its high Prize Questions 
and so liberal Prizes, could have proceeded, — 
let him now cease such wonder ; and, with un- 
divided faculty, betake himself to the Con- 
curre7iz (Competition)/' 

We ask : Has this same "perhaps not ill-writ- 
ten Program," or any other authentic Trans- 
action of that Property-conserving Society, fall- 
en under the eye of the British Reader, in any 
Journal, foreign or domestic? If so, what are 
those Prize-Questions; what are the terms of 
Competition, and when and where? No 
printed Newspaper-leaf, no farther light of 
any sort, to be met with in these Paper-bags! 
Or is the whole business one other of those 
whimsicalities and perverse inexplicabilities, 
whereby Plerr Teufelsdrockh, meaning much 
or nothing, is pleased so often to play fast-and- 
loose with us? 

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor 
give utterance to a painful suspicion, which, 
through late Chapters, has begun to haunt 
him; paralyzing any little enthusiasm that 
might still have rendered his thorny Biograph- 
ical task a labor of love. It is a suspicion 
grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed 
almost into certainty by the more and more 
discernible humoristico-satirical tendency of 
Teufelsdrockh, in whom underground humors 
and intricate sardonic rogueries, wheel within 

16 Sartor Eesartas 



234 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

wheel, defy all reckoning: a suspicion, in one 
word, that these Autobiographical Documents 
are partly a mystification ! What if many so- 
called Fact were little' better than a Fiction ; if 
here we had no direct Camera-obscura Picture 
of the Professor's History; but only some 
more or less fantastic Adumbration, symboli- 
cally, perhaps significantly enough, shadowing 
forth the same ! Our theory begins to be that, 
in receiving as literally authentic what was but 
hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, 
whom in that case we scruple not to name 
Hofrath Nose-of-Wax, was made a fool of, and 
set adrift to make foOls of others. Could it be 
expected, indeed, that a man so known for im- 
penetrable reticence as Teufelsdrockh, would 
all at once frankly unlock his private citadel 
to an English Editor and a German Hofrath ; 
and not rather deceptively inlock both Editor 
and Hofrath in the labyrinthic tortuosities and 
covered-ways of said citadel (having enticed 
them thither), to see, in his half-devilish way, 
how the fools would look ! 

Of one fool, however, the Herr Professor 
will perhaps find himself short. On a small 
slip, formerly thrown aside as blank, the ink 
being all but invisible, we lately notice, and 
with effort decipher, the following: "What 
are your historical Facts ; still more your bio- 
graphical? Wilt thou know a Man, above all a 
Mankind, by stringing-together iDeadrolls of 
what thou namest Facts? The Man is the 
spirit he worked in ; not what he did, but what 
he became. Facts are engraved Hierograms, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 235 

for which the fewest have the key. And then 
how your Blockhead {Dummkopf) studies not 
their Meaning; but simply whether they are 
well or ill cut, what he calls Moral or Im- 
moral! Still worse is it with your Bung-ler 
{Pfuscher) : such I have seen reading some 
Rousseau, with pretenses of interpretation: 
and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of-Eternity 
for a common poisonous reptile." Was the 
Professor apprehensive lest an Editor, selected 
as the present boasts himself, might mistake 
the Teufelsdrockh Serpent of Eternity in like 
manner? For which reason it was to be 
altered, not without underhand satire, into a 
plainer Symbol? Or is this merely one of his 
half -sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can but 
set on the back of a Figure, he cares not 
whither it gallop? We say not with certainty; 
and, indeed, so strange is the Professor, can 
never say. If our suspicion be wholly un- 
founded, let his own questionable ways, not 
our necessary circumspectness, bear the blame. 
But be this as it will, the somewhat exasper- 
ated and, indeed, exhausted Editor determines 
here to shut these Paper-bags for the present. 
Let it suffice that we know of Teufelsdrockh, 
so far, if '*not what he did, yet what he be- 
came:" the rather, as his character has now 
taken its ultimate bent, and no new revolu- 
tion, of importance, is to be looked for. The 
imprisoned Chrysalis is now a winged Psyche: 
and such, wheresoever be its flight, it will 
continue. To trace by what complex gyrations 
(flights are involuntary waftings) through the 



236 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

mere external Life element, Teufelsdrockh 
reaches his University Professorship, and the 
Psyche clothes herself in civic Titles, without 
altering her now fixed nature, — would be com- 
paratively an unproductive task, were we even 
unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a 
false and impossible one. His outward Biog- 
raphy, therefore, which, at the Blumine Lov- 
er's- Leap, we saw churned utterly into spray- 
vapor, may hover in that condition, for aught 
that concerns us here. Enough that by survey 
of certain "pools and plashes," we have ascer- 
tained its general direction ; do we not already 
know that, by one way and other, it has long 
since rained-down again into a stream; and 
even now, at Weissnichtwo, flows deep and 
still, fraught with the Philosophy of Clothes, 
and visible to whoso will cast eye thereon? 
Over much invaluable matter, that lies scat- 
tered, like 'jewels among quarry-rubbish, in 
those Paper-catacombs, we may have occasion 
to glance back, and somewhat will demand 
insertion at the right place: meanwhile be 
our tiresome diggings therein suspended. 

If now, before reopening the great Clothes- 
Volume, we ask what our degree of progress, 
during these Ten Chapters, has been, toward 
right understanding of the Clothes-Philosophy, 
let not our discouragement become total. To 
speak in that old figure of the Hell-gate Bridge 
over Chaos, a few flying pontoons have per- 
haps been added, though as yet they drift 
straggling on the Flood ; how far they will 
reach, when once the chains are straightened 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 237 

and fastened, can, at present, only be matter 
of conjecture. 

So much we already calculate: Through 
many a little loop-hole, we have had glimpses 
into the internal world of Teufelsdrockh ; his 
strange mystic, almost magic Diagram of the 
Universe, and how it was gradually drawn, is 
not henceforth altogether dark to us. Those 
mysterious ideas on Time, which merit consid- 
eration, and are not wholly unintelligible with 
such, may by and by prove significant. Still 
more may his somewhat peculiar view of Na- 
ture, the decisive Oneness he ascribes to 
Nature. How all Nature and Life are but 
one Garment, a "Living Garment," woven 
and ever aweaving in the "Loom of Time"; 
is not here, indeed, the outline of a whole 
Clothes-Philosophy; at least the arena it is to 
work in? Remark, too, that the Character of 
the Man, nowise without meaning in such a 
matter, becomes less enigmatic: amid so much 
tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted mad- 
ness, do not a certain indomitable Defiance and 
yet a boundless Reverence seem to loom forth, 
as the two mountain-summits, on whose rock- 
strata all the rest were based and built? 

Nay, further, may we not say that Teufels- 
drockh 's Biography, allowing it even, as sus- 
pected, only a hieroglyphical truth, exhibits a 
man, as it were, pre-appointed for Clothes- 
Philosophy? To look through the Shows of 
things into Things themselves he is led and 
compelled. The "Passivity" given him by 
birth is fostered by all turns of his fortune. 



238 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Everywhere cast out, like oil out of water, from 
mingling in any Employment, in any public 
Communion, he has no portion but Solitude, 
and a life of Meditation. The whole energy 
of his existence is directed, through long years, 
on one task ; that of enduring pain, if he can- 
not cure it. Thus everywhere do the Shows 
of things oppress him, withstand him, threaten 
him with fearfullest destruction: only by vic- 
toriously penetrating into Things themselves 
can he find peace and a stronghold. But is 
not this same looking-through the Shows, or 
Vestures, into the Things, even the first pre- 
liminary to a Philosophy of Clothes? Do we 
not, in all this, discern some beckonings 
toward the true higher purport of such a Phi- 
losophy; and what shape it must assume with 
such a man, in such an era? 

Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the cour- 
teous Reader is not utterly without guess 
whither he is bound: nor, let us hope, for all 
the fantastic Dream-Grottoes through which, 
as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he must wan- 
der, will there be wanting between whiles 
some twinkling of a steady Polar Star. 



BOOK THIRD. 



CHAPTER I. 

INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 

As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man 
Teufelsdrockh, from an early part of this 
Clothes- Volume, has more and more exhibited 
himself. Striking it was, amid all his perverse 
cloudiness, with what force of vision and of 
heart he pierced into the mystery of the World ; 
recognizing in the highest sensible phenom- 
ena, so far as Sense went, only fresh or faded 
Raiment; yet ever, under this, a celestial Es- 
sence thereby rendered visible; and while, on 
the one hand, he trod the old rags of Matter, 
with their tinsels, into the mire, he on the 
other everywhere exalted Spirit above all 
earthly principalities and powers, and wor- 
shiped it, though under the meanest shapes, 
with a true Platonic mysticism. What the 
man ultimately purposed by thus casting his 
Greek-fire into the general Wardrobe of the 
Universe: what such, more or less complete, 
rending and burning of Garments, throughout 
the whole compass of Civilized Life and Spec- 
ulation, should lead to ; the rather as he was 
no Adamite, in any sense, and could not, like 
239 



240 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Rousseau, recommend either bodily or intel- 
lectual Nudity, and a return to the savage 
state ; all this our readers are now bent to dis- 
cover; this is, in fact, properly the gist and 
purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philos- 
ophy of Clothes. 

Be it remembered, however, that such pur- 
port is here not so much evolved, as detected 
to lie ready for evolving. We are to guide our 
British Friends into the new Gold-country, and 
show them the mines ; nowise to dig out and 
exhaust its wealth, which indeed remains for 
all time inexhaustible. Once there, let each 
dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. 

Neither, in so capricious inexpressible a 
Work as this of the Professor's, can our course 
now more than formerly be straightforward, 
step by step, but at best leap by leap. Sig- 
nificant Indications stand out here and there ; 
which for the critical eye, that looks both 
widely and narrowly, shape themselves into 
some ground-scheme of a Whole: to select 
these with judgment, so that a leap from one 
to the other be possible, and (in our old figure) 
by chaining them together, a passable Bridge 
be effected : this, as heretofore, continues our 
only method. Among such light-spots, the 
following floating in much wild matter about 
Perfectibility, has seemed worth clutching at : 

"Perhaps the most remarkable incident in 
Modern History," says Teufelsdrockh, "is not 
the Diet of Worms, still less the Battle of 
Austerlitz, Waterloo, Peterloo, or any other 
Battle ; but an incident passed carelessly over 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 241 

by most Historians, and treated with some 
degree of ridicule by others: namely, George 
Fox's making to himself a suit of Leather. 
This man, the first of the Quakers, and by 
trade a Shoemaker, was one of those, to whom, 
under ruder or purer form, the Divine Idea of 
the Universe is pleased to manifest itself; and, 
across all the hulls of Ignorance and earthly 
Degradation, shine through, in unspeakable 
Awfulness, unspeakable Beauty, on their souls: 
who therefore are rightly accounted Prophets, 
God-possessed ; or even Gods, as in some periods 
it has chanced. Sitting in his stall ; working on 
tanned hides, amid pincers, paste-horns, rosin 
swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of rubbish, 
this youth had, nevertheless, a Living Spirit 
belonging to him; also an antique Inspired 
Volume, through which, as through a window, 
it could look upward, and discern its celestial 
Home, The task of a daily pair of shoes, 
coupled even with some prospect of victuals, 
and an honorable Mastership in Cordwainery, 
and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his 
hundred, as the crown of longfaithful sewing, — 
was nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind : 
but ever amid the boring and hammering came 
tones from that far country, came Splendors 
and Terrors ; for this poor Cordwainer, as we 
said, was a Man ; and the Temple of Immens- 
ity, wherein as Man he had been sent to min- 
ister, was full of holy mystery to him. 

"The Clergy of the neighborhood, the 
ordained Watchers and Interpreters of that 
same holy mystery, listened with unaffected 

16 



242 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

tedium to his consultations, and advised him, 
as the solution of such doubts, to * drink beer 
and dance with the girls. ' Blind leaders of 
the blind! For what end were their tithes 
levied and eaten ; for what were their shovel- 
hats scooped out, and their surplices and cas- 
sock-aprons girt-on ; and such a church-repair- 
ing, and chaffering, and organing, and other 
racketing, held over that spot of God's Earth, 
— if Man were but a Patent Digester, and the 
Belly with its adjuncts the grand Reality? 
Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred 
scorn, back to his Leather-parings and his 
Bible. Mountains of encumbrance, higher 
than -^tna, had been heaped over that Spirit: 
but it was a Spirit, and would not lie buried 
there. Through long days and nights of silent 
agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's 
force, to be free: how its prison-mountains 
heayed and swayed tumultuously, as the giant 
spirit shook them to this hand and that, and 
emerged into the light of Heaven ! That Lei- 
cester shoeshop, had men known it, was a hol- 
ier place than any Vatican of Loretto-shrine. 
— 'So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed 
in,' groaned he, 'with thousand requisitions, 
obligations, straps, tatters, and tag-rags, I can 
neither see nor move : not at my own am I, but 
the World's; and Time flies fast, and Heaven 
is high, and Hell is deep: Man ! bethink thee, 
if thou hast power of Thought? Why riot; 
what binds me here? Want, Want! — Ha, of 
what? Will all the shoe-wages under the Moon 
ferry me across into that far Land of Light? 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 243 

Only Meditation can, and devout Prayer to 
God. I will to the woods: the hollow of a tree 
will lodge me, wild-berries feed me ; and for 
Clothes, cannot I stitch myself one perennial 
suit of Leather!' 

" Historical Oil-painting, ' ' continues Teufels- 
drockh, "is one of the Arts I never practiced; 
therefore shall I not decide whether this sub- 
ject were easy of execution on the canvas. 
Yet often has it seemed to me as if such first 
outflashing of man's Freewill, to lighten, more 
and more into Day, the Chaotic Night that 
threatened to ingulf him in its hindrances and 
its horrors, were properly the only grandeur 
there is in History. Let some living Angelo 
or Rosa, with seeing eye and understanding 
heart, picture George Fox on that morning, 
when he spreads out his cutting-board for the 
last time, and cuts cowhides by unwonted pat- 
terns, and stitches them together into one 
continuous all- including Case, the farewell 
service of his awl ! Stitch away, thou noble 
Fox : every prick of that little instrument is 
pricking into the heart of Slavery, and World- 
worship, and the Mammon-god. Thy elbows 
jerk, as in strong swimmer-strokes, and every 
stroke is bearing thee across the Prison-ditch, 
within which Vanity holds her Workhouse and 
Rag-fair, into lands of true Liberty; were the 
work done, there is in broad Europe one Free 
Man, and thou art he ! 

'*Thus from the lowest depth there is a path 
to the loftiest height; and for the Poor also a 
Gospel has been published. Surely if, as D'Al- 



244 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

embert asserts, my illustrious namesake, Diog- 
enes, was the greatest man of Antiquity, only 
that he wanted Decency, then by stronger rea- 
son is George Fox the greatest of the Moderns, 
and greater than Diogenes himself: for he too 
stands on the adamantine basis of his Man- 
hood, casting aside all props and shores; yet 
not, in half-savage Pride, undervaluing the 
Earth ; valuing it rather, as a place to yield 
him warmth and food, he looks Heavenward 
from his Earth, and dwells in an element of 
Mercy and Worship, with a still Strength, such 
as the Cynic's Tub did nowise witness. Great, 
truly, was that Tub; a temple from which 
man's dignity and divinity was scornfully 
preached abroad: but greater is the Leather 
Hull, for the same sermon was preached there, 
and not in Scorn but in Love. " 

George Fox's "perennial suit," with all that 
it held, has been worn quite into ashes for 
nigh two centuries : why, in a discussion on the 
Perfectibility of Society, reproduce it nov\^? 
Not out of blind sectarian partisanship : Teu- 
felsdrockh himself is no Quaker; with all his 
pacific tendencies, did not we see him, in that 
scene at the North Cape, with the Archangel 
Smuggler, exhibit fire-arms? 

For us, aware of his deep Saasculottism, 
there is more meant in this passage than 
meets the ear. At the same time, who can 
avoid smiling at the earnestness and Boeotian 
simplicity (if indeed there be not an underhand 
satire in it), with which that "Incident" is 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 245 

here brought forward; and, in the Professor's 
ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst 
in Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation! 
Does Teufelsdrockh anticipate that, in this age 
of refinement, any considerable class of the 
community, by way of testifying against the 
"Mammon-god," and escaping from what he 
calls "Vanity's Workhouse and Ragfair, " 
where doubtless some of them are toiled and 
whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently, — will 
sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of 
Leather? The idea is ridiculous in the 
extreme. Will Majesty lay aside its robes of 
state, and Beauty its frills and train-gowns, for 
a second-skin of tanned hide? By which 
change Huddersfield and Manchester, and 
Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, 
were reduced to hungry solitudes; and only 
Day and Martin could profit. For neither 
would Teufelsdrockh's mad day-dream, here 
as we presume covertly intended of leveling 
Society (leveling it indeed with a vengeance, 
into one huge drowned marsh!), and so attain- 
ing the political effects of Nudity without its 
frigorific or other consequences, — be thereby 
realized. Would not the rich man purchase a 
waterproof suit of Russia Leather; and the 
high-born Belle step forth in red or azure mor- 
occo, lined with chamoy: the black cowhide 
being left to the Drudges and Gibonites of the 
world ; and so all the old Distinctions be re- 
established? 



246 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Or has the Professor his own deeper inten- 
tion ; and laughs in his sleeve at our strictures 
and glosses, which indeed are but a part 
thereof? 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 247 



CHAPTER 11. 

CHURCH-CLOTHES. 

Not less questionable is his Chapter on 
Church-Clothes, which has the farther distinc- 
tion of being the shortest in the Volume. We 
here translate it entire ; 

*'By Church-Clothes, it need not be premised 
that I mean infinitely more than Cassocks and 
Surplices ; and do not at all mean the mere 
haberdasher Sunday-Clothes that men go to 
Church in. Far from it! Church-Clothes are, 
in our vocabulary, the Forms, the Vestures, 
under which men have at various periods 
embodied and represented for themselves the 
Religious Principle; that is to say, invested 
the Divine Idea of the World with a sensible 
and practically active Body, so that it might 
dwell among them as a living and life-giving 
Word. 

** These are unspeakably the most important 
of all the vestures and garnitures of Human 
Existence. They are first spun and woven, I 
may say, by that wonder of wonders, Society ; 
for it is still only when *two or three are gath- 
ered together, ' that Religion, spiritually exist- 
ent, and indeed indestructible, however latent, 
in each, first outwardly manifests itself (as with 
* cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks to be 



248 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

embodied in a visible Communion and Church 
Militant. Mystical, more than magical, is that 
Communing of Soul with Soul, both looking 
heavenward: here properly Soul first speaks 
with Soul; for only in looking heavenward, 
take it in what sense you may, not in looking 
earthward, does what we can call Union, 
mutual Love, Society, begin to be possible. 
How true is that of Novalis: 'It is certain, my 
Belief gains quite infinitely the moment I can 
convince another mind thereof!' Gaze thou 
in the face of thy Brother, in those eyes where 
plays the lambent fire of Kindness, or in those 
where rages the lurid conflagration of Anger: 
feel how thy own so quiet Soul is straightway 
involuntarily kindled with the like, and ye 
blaze and reverberate on each other, till it is 
all one limitless confluent flame (of embracing 
Love, or of deadly-grappling Hate) ; and then 
say what miraculous virtue goes out of man 
into man. But if so, through all the thick- 
plied hulls of our Earthly Life; how much 
more when it is of the Divine Life we speak, 
and inmost Me is, as it were, brought into, 
contact with inmost Me! 

"Thus was it that I said, the Church-Clothes 
are first spun and woven by Society; outward 
Religion originates by Society, Society becomes 
possible by Religion. Nay, perhaps, every 
conceivable Society, past and present, may 
well be figured as properly and wholly a 
Church, in one or other of these three predica- 
ments: an audibly preaching and prophesying 
Church, which is the best; second, a Church 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 249 

that struggles to preach and prophesy, but can- 
not as yet, till its Pentecost come; and" third 
and worst, a Church gone dumb with old age, 
or which only mumbles delirium prior to dis- 
solution. Whoso fancies that by Church is 
here meant Chapterhouses and Cathedrals, or 
by preaching and prophesying mere speech 
and chanting, let him," sa3^s the oracular Pro- 
fessor, "read on, light of heart [^etrosten 
Muthes)r 

"But with regard to your Church proper, and 
the Church- Clothes specially recognized as 
Church-Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, 
that without such Vestures and sacred Tissues 
Society has not existed, and will not exist. 
For if Government is, so to speak, the outward 
Skin of the Body Politic, holding the whole 
together and protecting it; and all your Craft- 
Guilds, and Associations for Industry, of hand 
or of head, are the Fleshly-Clothes, the mus- 
cular and osseous Tissues l5ang (under such 
Skin), whereby Society stands and works; — 
then is Religion the inmost Pericardial and 
Nervous Tissue, which ministers Life and 
warm Circulation to the whole. Without which 
Pericardial Tissue the Bones and Muscles (of 
Industry) were inert, or animated only by a 
Galvanic vitality; the Skin would become a 
shriveled pelt, or fast-rotting raw-hide; and 
Society itself a dead carcass, — deserving to be 
buried. Men were no longer Social, but Gre- 
garious, which latter state also could not con- 
tinue, but must gradually issue in universal 
selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and 



250 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

dispersion; — whereby, as we might continue to 
say, the very dust and dead body of Society 
would have evaporated and become abolished. 
Such, and so all-important, all-sustaining, are 
the Church-Clothes to civilized or even to 
rational men. ** Meanwhile, in our era of the 
World, those same Church-Clothes have gone 
sorrowfully out-at-elbows; nay, far worse, 
many of them have become mere hollow 
Shapes, or Masks, under which no living 
Figure or Spirit any longer dwells ; but only 
spiders and unclean beetles, in horrid accumu- 
lation, drive their trade; and the mask still 
glares on you with its glass-eyes, in ghastly 
affectation of Life, —some generation-and-half 
after Religion has quite withdrawn from it, 
and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself 
new Vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless 
us, or our sons or grandsons. As a Priest, or 
Interpreter of the Holy, is the noblest and 
highest of all men, so is a Sham-priest (Schein- 
priesier) the falsest and basest; neither is it 
doubtful that his Canonicals, were they Popes' 
Tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make 
bandages for the wounds of mankind ; or even 
to burn into tinder, for general scientific or 
culinary purposes. 

"All which, as out of place here, falls to be 
handled in my Second Volume, On the Palin- 
genesia, or New-birth of Society ; which volume, 
as treating practically of the Wear, Destruc- 
tion, and Retexture of Spiritual Tissues, or 
Garments, forms, properly speaking, the 
Transcendental or ultimate Portion of this my 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 251 

work on Clothes, and is already in a state of 
forwardness. ' ' , 

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, 
or commentary being added, does Teufels- 
drockh, and must his Editor now, terminate 
the singular chapter on Church-Clothes ! 



252 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER III. 

SYMBOLS. 

Probably it will elucidate the drift of these 
foregoing obscure utterances, if we here insert 
somewhat of our Professor's speculations on 
Symbols. To state his whole doctrine, indeed, 
were beyond our compass: nowhere is he more 
mysterious, incapable, than in this of "Fantasy 
being the organ of the God-like," and how 
"Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, 
on the small Visible, does nevertheless extend 
down into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, 
of which Invisible, indeed, his Life is properly 
the bodying forth." Let us, omitting these 
high transcendental aspects of the matter, 
study to glean (whether from the Paper-bags 
or the Printed Volume) what little seems log- 
ical and practical, and cunningly arrange it 
into such degree of coherence as it will assume. 
By way of proem, take the following not 
injudicious remarks: 

"The benignant efficacies of Concealment, " 
cries our Professor, "who shall speak or sing? 
Silence and Secrecy! Altars might still be 
raised to them (were this an altar-building 
time) for universal worship. Silence is the 
element in which great things fashion them- 
selves together; that at length they may 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 253 

emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the day- 
light of Life, which they are thenceforth to 
rule. Not William the Silent only, but all the 
considerable men I have known, and the most 
undiplomatic and unstrategic of these, forbore 
to babble of what they were creating and pro- 
jecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, 
do thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day : 
on the morrow, how much clearer are thy pur- 
poses and duties; what wreck and rubbish 
have those mute workmen within thee swept 
away, when intrusive noises were shut out! 
Speech is too often not, as the Frenchmen 
defined it, the art of concealing Thought; but 
of quite stifling and suspending Thought, so 
that there is none to conceal. Speech too is 
great, but not the greatest. As the Swiss 
Inscription says: Sprechen ist silbern, Schwei^en 
ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is goldeny ; 
or as I might rather express it: Speech is Oa 
Time, Silence is of Eternity. 

"Bees will not work except in darkness^ 
Thought will not work except in Silence, 
neither will Virtue work except in Secrecy. 
Let not thy left hand know what thy right 
hand doeth ! Neither shalt thou prate even to 
thy own heart of 'those secrets known to all.' 
Is not Shame (Scharyi) the soil of all Virtue, ot 
all good manners and good morals? Like other 
plants, Virtue will not grow unless its root be 
hidden, buried from the eye of the sun. Let 
the sun shine on it, nay, do but look at it priv- 
ily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will 
glad thee. O my Friends, when we view the 



254 SARTOR RESARTUS. * 

fair clustering flowers that over-wreathe, for 
example, the Marriage-bower, and encircle 
man's life with the fragrance and hues of 
Heaven, what hand will not smite the foul 
plunderer that grabs them up by the roots, and 
with grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us 
the dung they flourish in! Men speak much 
of the Printing- Press with its Newspapers: dn 
Himmelf what are these to Clothes and the 
Tailor's Goose?" 

"Of kin to the so incalculable influences of 
Concealment, and connected with still greater 
things, is the wondrous agency of Symbols. 
In a Symbol there is concealment and yet 
revelation: here therefor, by Silence and by 
Speech acting together, comes a double sig- 
nificance. And if both the Speech be itself 
high, and the Silence fit and noble, how ex- 
pressive will their union be! Thus in many a 
painted Device, or simple Seal-emblem, the 
commonest truth stands out to us proclaimed 
with quite new emphasis. 

"For it is here that Fantasy with her mystic 
wonderland plays into the small prose domain 
of Sense, and becomes incorporated therewith. 
In the Symbol proper, what we can call a 
Symbol, there is ever, more or less distinctly 
and directly, some embodiment and revelation 
of the Infinite ; the Infinite is made to blend 
itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as 
it were, attainable there. By symbols, accord- 
ingly, is man guided and commanded, made 
happy, made wretched. He everywhere finds 
himself encompassed with Symbols recognized 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 255 

as such or not recognized: the Universe is 
but one vast Symbol of God: nay if thou wilt 
have it, what is riian himself but a Symbol of 
God ; is not all that he does symbolical ; a reve- 
lation to Sense of the mystic god-given force 
that is in him; a 'Gospel of Freedom,' which 
he, the 'Messias of Nature,' preaches, as he 
can, by act and word? Not a Hut he builds 
but is the visible embodiment of a thought; 
but bears visible record of invisible things ; but 
is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as 
well as real." 

"Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in 
quite antipodal contrast with these high-soar- 
ing delineations, which we have here cut short 
on the verge of the inane, "Man, is by birth 
somewhat of an owl. Perhaps, too, of all the 
owleries that ever possessed him, the most 
owlish, if we consider it, is that of your actu- 
ally existing Motive-Millwrights. Fantastic 
tricks enough man has played, in his times; 
has fancied himself to be the most things, 
down even to an animated heap of Glass; but 
to fancy himself a dead Iron-Balance for weigh- 
ing Pains and Pleasures on, was reserved for 
this his latter era. There stands he, his Uni- 
verse one huge Manger, filled with hay and 
thistles to be weighed against each other; and 
looks long-eared enough. Alas, poor devil; 
specters are appointed to haunt him: one age 
he is hag-ridden, bewitched ; the next, priest- 
ridden, befooled ; in all ages, bedeviled. And 
now the Genius of Mechanism smothers him 
worse than any Nightmare did ; till the Soul is 



256 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of 
Digestive, Mechanic life remains. In Earth 
and in Heaven he can see nothing but Mech- 
anism; has fear for nothing else, hope in 
nothing else: the world would indeed grind 
him to pieces ; but cannot he fathom the Doc- 
trine of Motives, and cunningly compute these, 
and mechanize them to grind the other way? 

"Were he not, as has been said, purblinded 
by enchantment, you had but to bid him open 
his eyes and look. In which country, in which 
time, was it hitherto that man's history, or 
the history of any man, went on by calculated 
or calculable 'Motives'? What make ye of 
your Christianities, and Chivalries, and Refor- 
mations, and Marseilles Hymns, and Reigns 
of Terrors? Nay, has not perhaps the Motive- 
grinder himself been in Love? Did he never 
stand so much as a contested Election? Leave 
him to Time, and the medicating virtue of 
Nature." 

"Yes, Friends," elsewhere observes the Pro- 
fessor, "not our Logical, Mensurative faculty, 
but our Imaginative one is King over us; I 
might say. Priest and Prophet to lead us heav- 
enward; or Magician and Wizard to lead us 
hellward. Nay, even for the basest Sensual- 
ist, what is Sense but the implement of Fan- 
tasy ; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the 
dullest existence there is a sheen either of 
Inspiration or of Madness (thou partly hast it 
in thy choice, which of the two), that gleams 
in from the circumambient Eternity, and colors 
with its own hues our little islet of Time. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 257 

The Understanding is indeed thy window, too 
clear thou canst not make it; but Fantasy is 
thy eye, with its color-giving retina, healthy 
or diseased. Have not I myself known five- 
hundred living soldiers sabred into crows'-meat 
for a piece of glazed cotton, which they called 
their Flag; which, had you sold it at any mar- 
ket-cross, would not have brought above three 
groschen? Did not the whole Hungarian 
Nation rise, like some tumultuous moon-stirred 
Atlantic, when Kaiser Joseph pocketed their 
Iron Crown ; an implement, as was saga- 
ciously observed, in size and commercial value 
little differing from a horse- shoe? It is in 
and through Symbols that man, consciously or 
unconsciously, lives, works, and has his 
being: those ages, moreover, are accounted 
the noblest which can the best recognize sym- 
bolical worth, and prize it the highest. For is 
not a symbol ever, to him who has eyes for it, 
some dimmer or clearer revelation of the God- 
like? 

"Of Symbols, however, I remark farther, 
that they have both an extrinsic and intrinsic 
value; oftenest the former only. What, for 
instance, was in that clouted Shoe, which the 
Peasants bore aloft with them as ensign in 
their Bauern-kfieg (Peasants' War) ? Or in the 
Wallet-and-staff round which the Netherland 
Gueux, glorying in that nickname of Beggars, 
heroically rallied and prevailed, though against 
Kinng Philip himself? Intrinsic significance 
hese had none: only extrinsic; as the acci- 
dental Standards of multitudes more or less 

17 Sartor Besartus 



258 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

sacredly uniting together; in which union it- 
self, as above noted, there is ever something 
mystical and borrowing of the Godlike. Un- 
der a like category, too, stand, or stood, the 
stupidest heraldic Coats-of-arms; military Ban- 
ners everywhere ; and generally all national or 
other sectarian Costumes and Customs: they 
have no intrinsic, necessary divineness, or even 
worth ; but have acquired an extrinsic one. 
Nevertheless through all these there glimmers 
something of a Divine Idea; as through mili- 
tary Banners themselves, the Divine Idea of 
Duty, of heroic Daring ; in some instances of 
Freedom, of Light. Nay the highest ensign 
that men ever met and embraced under, the 
Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental 
extrinsic one. 

"Another matter it is, however, when your 
Symbol has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself 
fit that men should unite round it. Let but 
the Godlike manifest itself to Sense ; let but 
Eternity look, more or less visibly, through the 
Time-Figure {Zeitbild)\ Then is it fit that 
men unite there ; and worship together before 
such Symbol ; and so from day to day, and 
from age to age, superadd to it new divineness. 

"Of this latter sort are all true Works of 
Art : in them (if thou know a Work of Art 
from a Daub of Artifice) wilt thou discern 
Eternity looking^ through Time; the Godlike 
Tendered visible. ] Here too may an extrinsic 
value gradually ^superadd itself: thus certain 
Iliads, and the like, have, in three-thousand 
years, attained quite new significance. But 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 259 

nobler than all in this kind are the Lives of 
heroic god-inspired Men; for what other Work 
of Art is so divine? In Death too, in the 
Death of the Just, as the last perfection of a 
Work of Art, may we not discern symbolic 
meaning? In that divinely transfigured Sleep, 
as of Victory, resting over the beloved face 
which now knows thee no more, read (if thou 
canst for tears) the confluence of Time with 
Eternity, and some gleam of the latter peering 
through. 

"Highest of all Symbols are those wherein 
the Artist or Poet has risen into Prophet, and 
all men can recognize a present God, and wor- 
ship the same: I mean religious S5^mbols. 
Various enough have been such religious Sym- 
bols, what we call Religions; as men stood in 
this stage of culture or the other, and could 
worse or better body- forth the Godlike : some 
Symbols with a transient intrinsic worth; 
many with only an extrinsic. If thou ask to 
what height man has carried it in this manner, 
look on our divinest Symbol: on Jesus of 
Nazareth, and his Biography, and what fol- 
lowed therefrom. Higher has the human 
Thought not yet reached; this is Christianity 
and Christendom; a Symbol of quite perennial, 
infinite character ; whose significance will ever 
demand to be anew inquired into, and anew 
made manifest. 

*'But, on the whole, as Time adds much to 
the sacredness of Symbols, so likewise in his 
progress he at length defaces, or even dese- 
crates them ; and Symbols, like all terrestrial 



260 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Garments, wax old. /Homer's Epos, has not 
ceased to be true; yet/ it is no longer our Epos, 
but shines in the (jistance, if clearer and 
clearer, yet also smaller and smaller like a 
receding Star. It needs a scientific telescope, 
it needs to be reinterpreted and artificially 
brought near us, before we can so much as 
know that it was a Sun. So likewise a day 
comes when the Runic Thor, with his Eddas, 
must withdraw into dimness; and many an 
African Mumbo-Jumbo and Indian Pawaw be 
utterly abolished. For all things, even Celes- 
tial Luminaries, much more atmospheric mete- 
ors, have their rise, their culmination, their 
decline." 

"Small is this which thou tellest me, that the 
Royal Scepter is but a piece of gilt- wood ; that 
the Pyx has become a most foolish box, and 
truly, as Ancient Pistol thought, 'of little 
price. ' A right Conjurer might I name thee, 
couldst thou conjure back into these wooden 
tools the divine virtue they once held. ' ' 

"Of this thing, however, be certain: wouldst 
thou plant for Eternity, then plant into the 
deep infinite faculties of man, his Fantasy and 
Heart; wouldst thou plant for Year and Day, 
then plant into his shallow superficial faculties, 
his Self-love and Arithmetical Understanding, 
what will grow there. A Hierarch, therefore, 
and Pontiff of the World will we call him, the 
Poet and inspired Maker; who, Prometheus- 
like, can shape new Symbols, and bring new 
Fire from Heaven to fix it there. Such too 
will not always be wanting; neither perhaps 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 261 

now are. Meanwhile, as the average of mat- 
ters goes, we account him Legislator and wise 
who can so much as tell when a Symbol has 
grown old, and gently remove it. 

"When, as the last English Coronation* was 
preparing, "concludes this wonderful Professor, 
"I read in their newspapers that the 'Champion 
of England, ' he who has to offer battle to the 
Universe for his new King, had brought it so 
far that he could now * mount his horse with 
little assistance,' I said to myself: Here also 
we have a Symbol well-nigh superannuated. 
Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the 
tatters and rags of superannuated worn-out 
Symbols (in this Ragfair of a World) dropping 
off everywhere, to hoodwink, to halter, to 
tether you : nay, if you shake them not aside, 
threatening to accumulate, and perhaps pro- 
duce suffocation?" 

* That of George, IV. Ed. 



262 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HELOTAGE. 

At this point we determine on adverting 
shortly, or rather reverting, to a certain Tract 
of Hofrath Heuschrecke's, entitled Institute 
for the Repression of Population ; which lies, 
dishonorably enough (with torn leaves, and a 
perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), stuffed into 
the Bag Pisces, not indeed for the sake of the 
Tract itself, which we admire little; but of 
the marginal Notes, evidently in Teufels- 
drockh's hand, which rather copiously fringe 
it. A few of these may be in their right place 
here. 

Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extra- 
ordinary schemes, and machinery of Corres- 
ponding Boards and the like, we shall not so 
much as glance. Enough for us to understand 
that Heuschrecke is a disciple of Mai thus; 
and so zealous for the doctrine, that his zeal 
almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of 
Population possesses the Hofrath ; something 
like a fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the 
more diluted forms of Madness. Nowhere, in 
that quarter of his intellectual world, is there 
light; nothing but a grim shadow of Hunger; 
open mouths opening wider and wider; a 
world to terminate by the frightfullest consum- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 263 

mation; b}^ its too dense inhabitants, fam- 
ished into delirium, universally eating one an- 
other. To make air for himself in which 
strangulation, choking enough to a benevolent 
heart, the Hofrath founds, or proposes to 
found, this Institute of his, as the best he can 
do. It is only v^ith our Professor's comments 
thereon that we concern ourselves. 

First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a 
speculative Radical, has his own notions about 
human dignity ; that the Zahdarm palaces and 
courtesies have not made him forgetful of the 
Futteral cottages. On the blank cover of 
Heuschrecke's Tract we find the following in- 
distinctly engrossed : 

"Two men I honor, and no third. First, 
the toil-worn Craftsman that with earth-made 
Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, 
and makes her man's. Venerable to me is the 
hard Hand; crooked coarse; wherein notwith- 
standing lies a cunning virtue, indefeasibly 
Toyal, as of the Scepter of this Planet. Ven- 
erable too is the rugged face, all weather- 
tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence ; for 
it is the face of a Man living manlike. O, but 
the more venerable for thy rudeness, and even 
because we must pity as well as love thee ! 
Hardly-entreated Brother! For us was thy 
back so bent, for us were thy straight limbs 
and fingers so deformed: thou wert our Con- 
script, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our 
battles wert so marred. For in thee too lay a 
god-created Form, but it was not to be un- 
folded; incrusted must it stand with the thick 



264 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

adhesions and defacements of Labor: and thy 
body, like thy soul, was not to know freedom. 
Yet toil on, toil on : thou art in thy duty, be 
out of it who may ; thou toilest for the alto- 
gether indispensable, for daily bread. 

"A second man I honor, and still more 
highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spirit- 
ually indispensable; not for daily bread, but 
the bread of Life. Is not he too in his duty; 
endeavoring toward inward Harmony; re- 
vealing this, by act or by word, through all 
his outward endeavors, be they high or low? 
Highest of all, when his outward and his inward 
endeavor are one; when we can name him 
Artist; not earthly Craftsman only, but in- 
spired Thinker, who with heaven-made Imple- 
ment conquers Heaven for us! If the poor 
and humble toil that we have Food, must not 
the high and glorious toil for him in return, 
that he have Light, have Guidance, Freedom, 
Immortality? — Tliese two, in all their degrees, 
I honor: all else is chaff and dust, which let 
the wind blow whither it listeth. 

"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when 
I find both dignities united ; and he that must 
toil outwardly for the lowest of man's wants 
is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sub- 
limer in this world know I nothing than a 
Peasant Saint, could such now anywhere be 
met with. Such a one will take thee back to 
Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of 
Heaven spring forth from the humblest depths 
of Earth, like a light shining in great dark- 
ness. ' ' 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 265 

And again: "It is not because of his toils 
that I lament for the poor: we must all toil, or 
steal (howsoever we name our stealing) , which 
is worse ; no faithful workman finds his task a 
pastime. The poor is hungry and athirst ; but 
for him also there is food and drink: he is 
heavy-laden and weary; but for him also the 
Heavens send Sleep, and of the deepest; in his 
smoky cribs, a clear dewy heaven of Rest en- 
velops him and fitful glitterings of cloud- 
skirted Dreams. But what I do mourn over 
is, that the lamp of his soul should go out ; that 
no ray of heavenly, or even of earthly knowl- 
edge, should visit him ; but only, in the hag- 
gard darkness, like two specters. Fear and 
Indignation bear him company. Alas, while 
the Body stands so broad and brawny, must 
the Soul lie blinded, dwarfed, stupefied, almost 
annihilated! — Alas, was this too a Breath of 
God; bestowed in Heaven, but on earth never 
to be unfolded !-p-That there should one Man 
die ignorant wh6 had capacity for Knowledge, 
this I call a tragedy, /were it to happen more 
than twenty times in the minute, as by some 
computations it does. The miserable fraction 
of Science which our united Mankind, in a 
wide Universe of Nescience, has acquired, why 
is not this, with all diligence, imparted to all?" 

Quite in an opposite strain is the following: 
"The old Spartans had a wiser method; and 
went out and hunted-down their Helots, and 
speared and spitted them, when they grew too 
numerous. With our improved fashions of 
hunting, Herr Hofrath, now after the inven- 

18 Sartor Resartus 



266 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

tion of fire-arms, and standing-armies, how 
much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the 
most thickly-people country, some three days 
annually might suffice to shoot all the able- 
bodied Paupers that had accumulated within 
the year. Let Governments think of this. 
The expense were trifling: nay the very car- 
casses would pay it. Have them salted and 
barreled; could not you victual therewith, if 
not Army and Navy, yet richly such infirm 
Paupers, in workhouses and elsewhere, as en- 
lightened Charity, dreading no evil of them, 
might see good to keep alive?" 

"And yet," writes he farther on, *' there 
must be something wrong. A full-formed 
Horse will, in any market, bring from twenty 
to as high as two-hundred Friedrichs d'or: 
such is his worth to the world. A well-formed 
Man is not only worth nothing to the world, 
but the world could afford him a round sum 
would he simply engage to go and hang him- 
self. Nevertheless, which of the two was the 
more cunningly-devised article, even as an 
Engine? Good Heavens! A white European 
Man, standing on his two Legs, with his two 
five-fingered Hands at his shackle-ones, and 
miraculous Head on his shoulders, is worth, I 
should say, from fifty to a hundred Horses!" 

"True, thou Gold- Hof rath," cries the Pro- 
fessor elsewhere: "too crowded indeed! Mean- 
while, what portion of this inconsiderable 
terraqueous Globe have ye actually tilled and 
delved, till it will grow no more? How thick 
stands your Population in the Pampas and 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 267 

Savannas of America; round ancient Car- 
thage, and in the interior of Africa; on both 
slopes of the Altaic chain, in the central Plat- 
form of Asia; in Spain, Greece, Turkey, Critn 
Tartary, the Curragh of Kildare? One man, 
in one year, as I have understood it, if you 
lend him Earth, will feed himself and nine 
others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and 
Alarics of our still-glowing, still expanding 
Europe; who, when their home is grown too 
narrow, will enlist, and, like Fire-pillars, 
guide onward those superfluous masses of 
indomitable living Valor; equipped, not now 
with the battle-ax and war-chariot, but with 
the steam-engine and ploughshare? Where 
are they? — Preserving their Game!" 



268 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PHCENIX. 

Putting which four singular Chapters to- 
gether, and alongside of them numerous hints, 
and even direct utterances, scattered over these 
Writings of his, we come upon the startling 
yet not quite unlooked-for conclusion, that 
Teufelsdrockh is one of those who consider 
Society, properly so called, to be as good as 
extinct ; and that only the gregarious feelings, 
and old inherited habitudes, at this juncture, 
hold us from Dispersion, and universal 
national, civil, domestic and personal war! 
He says expressly: ''For the last three cen- 
turies, above all for the last three quarters of a 
century, that same Pericardial Nervous Tissue 
(as we named it) of Religion, where lies the 
Life-essence of Society, has been smote at and 
perforated, needfully and needlessly; till now 
it is quite rent into shreds; and Society, long 
pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded 
as defunct; for those spasmodic, galvanic 
sprawlings are not life; neither indeed will 
they endure, galvanize as you may, beyond 
two days. ' ' 

"Call ye that a Society," cries he again, 
"where there is no longer any Social Idea 
extant; not so much as the Idea of a common 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 269 

Home, but only of a common over-crowded 
Lodging-house? Where each, isolated, regard- 
less of his neighbor, turned against his neigh- 
bor, clutches what he can get, and cries 'Mine !' 
and calls it Peace, because, in the cut-purse 
and cut-throat Scramble, no steel knives, but 
only a far cunninger sort, can be employed? 
Where Friendship, Communion, has become 
an incredible tradition; and your holiest 
Sacramental Supper is a smoking Tavern 
Dinner, with Cook for Evangelist? Where 
your Priest has no tongue but for plate-lick- 
ing: and your high Guides and Governors can- 
not guide ; but on all hands hear it passionately 
proclaimed: laissez faire ; Leave us alone of 
your guidance, such light is darker than dark- 
ness; eat you your wages, and sleep! 

''Thus, too," continues he, "does an observ- 
ant eye discern everywhere that saddest spec- 
tacle: the Poor perishing, like neglected, 
foundered Draught-Cattle, of Hunger and 
Overwork; the Rich, still more wretchedly, of 
Idleness, Satiety and Overgrowth. The 
Highest in rank, as length, without honor 
from the Lowest; scarcely, with a little mouth- 
honor, as from tavern-waiters who expect to 
put it in the bill. Once-sacred Symbols flut- 
tering as empty Pageants, whereof men 
grudge even the expense ; a World becoming 
dismantled: in one word, the Church fallen 
speechless, from obesity and apoplexy; the 
State shrunken into a Police-Office, straitened 
to get its pay!" 

We might ask, are there many "observant 



270 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

eyes," belonging to practical men in England 
or elsewhere, which have descried these phe- 
nomena ; or is it only from the mystic elevation 
of a German Wahngasse that such wonders are 
visible? Teufelsdrockh contends that the 
aspect of a "deceased or expiring Society" 
fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs may 
read. "What, for example," says he, "is the 
universally-arrogated Virtue, almost the sole 
remaining Catholic Virtue of these days? For 
some half century, it has been the thing you 
name 'Independence.' Suspicion of 'Servility,' 
of reverence for Superiors, the very dog leech 
is anxious to disavow. Fools! Were your 
Superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy 
to obey, reverence for them were even your 
only possible freedom. Independence, in all 
kinds, is rebellion; if unjust rebellion, why 
parade it, and everywhere prescribe it?" 

But what then? Are we returning, as Rous- 
seau prayed, to the state of Nature! "The 
Soul Politic having departed," says Teufels- 
drockh, "what can follow but that the Body 
Politic be decently interred, to avoid putres- 
cence? Liberals, Economists, Utilitarians 
enough I see marching with its bier, and 
chanting loud paeans, toward the funeral-pile, 
where, amid vvrailings from some, and saturna- 
lian revelries from the most, the venerable 
Corpse is to be burnt. Or, in plain words, that 
these men. Liberals, Utilitarians, or whatso- 
ever they are called, will ultimately carry 
their point, and disseter and destroy most 
existing Institutions of Society, seems a thing 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 271 

which has some time ago ceased to be doubt- 
ful. 

"Do we not see a httle subdivision of the 
grand Utilitarian Armament come to light 
even in insulated England? A living nucleus, 
that will attract and grow, does at length 
appear there also; and under curious phasis; 
properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so 
far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself 
the van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect 
of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-opera- 
tive spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in 
high places of Thought, here among ourselves 
and in every European country, at some time 
or other, within the last fifty years? If now 
in all countries, except perhaps England, it 
has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among 
Thinkers, and sunk to Journalists and the 
popular mass, — who sees not that, as hereby it 
no longer preaches, so the reason is, it nov/ 
needs no Preaching, but is in full universal 
Action, the doctrine everywhere known, and 
enthusiastically laid to heart? The fit pabu- 
lum, in these times, for a certain rugged work- 
shop intellect and heart, nowise without their 
corresponding workshop strength and ferocity, 
it requires but to be stated in such scenes to 
make proselytes enough. — Admirably calcu- 
lated for destroying, only not for rebuilding! 
It spreads like a sort of Dog-madness; till the 
whole World-kennel will be rabid: then woe 
to the Huntsmen, with or without their whips! 
They should have given the quadrupeds 
water," adds he; "the water, namely, of 



272 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Knowledge and of Life, while it was yet 
time." 

Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be 
relied on, we are at this hour in a most critical 
condition; beleaguered by that boundless 
"Armament of Mechanizers" and Unbelievers, 
threatening to strip us bare ! ' ' The world, ' ' 
says he, "as it needs must, is under a process 
of devastation and waste, which, whether by 
silent assiduous corrosion, or open quicker 
combustion, as the case chances, will effect- 
ually enough annihilate the past Forms of 
Society; replace them with what it may. For 
the present, it is contemplated that when 
man's whole Spiritual Interests are once 
divested, these innumerable stript-off Gar- 
ments shall mostly be burnt; but the sounder 
Rags among them be quilted together into one 
huge Irish watch-coat for ' the defense of the 
Body only!" — This, we think, is but Job's- 
news to the humane reader. 

"Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, "who 
can hinder it; who is there that can clutch 
into the wheelspokes of Destiny, and say to 
the Spirit of the Time : Turn back, I command 
thee? — Wiser were it that we yielded to the 
Inevitable and Inexorable, and accounted 
even this the best. " 

Nay, might not an attentive Editor, drawing 
his own inferences from what stands written, 
conjecture that Teufelsdrockh individually 
had yielded to this same "Inevitable and Inex- 
orable" heartily enough; and now sat waiting 
the issue, with his natural diabolico-angelical 




Toil-worn craftsman conquers the earth." — Page 263. 
Sartor Resartus. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 273 

Indifference, if not even Placidity? Did we 
not hear him complain that the World was a 
"huge Ragfair," and the "rags and tatters of 
old Symbols" were raining-down everywhere, 
like to drift him in, and suffocate him? What 
with those "unhaunted Helots" of his; and the 
uneven sic vos non vobis pressure and hard- 
crashing collision he is pleased to discern in 
existing things; what with the so hateful 
"empty Masks," full of beetles and spiders, 
yet glaring out on him, from their glass eyes, 
"with ghastly affectation of life," — we feel 
entitled to conclude him even willing that 
much should be thrown to the Devil, so it were 
but done gently! Safe himself in that "Pin- 
nacle of Weissnichtwo," he would consent, 
with a tragic solemnity, that the monster 
Utilitaria, held back, indeed, and moderated 
by noserings, halters, footshackles, and every 
conceivable modification of rope, should go 
forth to do her work ; — to tread down old ruin- 
ous Palaces and Temples with her broad hoof, 
till the whole were trodden down, that nev/ 
and better might be built! Remarkable in 
this point of view are the following sentences. 
"Society," says he, "is not dead: that Carcass, 
which you call dead Society, is but her mortal 
coil which she has shuffled off, to assume a 
nobler; she herself, through perpetual meta- 
morphoses, in fairer and fairer development, 
has to live till Time also merge in Eternity. 
Whatsoever two or three Living Men are 
gathered together, there is Society; or there it 
will be, with its cunning mechanisms and stu- 

18 



274 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

pendous structures, overspreading this little 
Globe, and reaching upward to Heaven and 
downward to Gehenna: for always, under one 
or the other figure, it has two authentic Reve- 
lations, of a God and of a Devil; the Pulpit, 
namely, and the Gallows. ' ' 

Indeed, we already heard him speak of 
*' Religion, in unnoticed nooks, weaving for 
herself new Vestures;" — Teufelsdrockh him- 
self being one of the loomtreadles? Elsewhere 
he quotes without censure that strange aphor- 
ism of Saint Simon's, concerning which and 
whom so much were to be said: '^L!age d'or, 
qu'une aveugle tradition a place jusquHci dans le 
passe ^ est devant fious ; The golden age, which a 
blind tradition has hitherto placed in the Past, 
is before us. ' ' — But listen again : 

"When the Phoenix is fanning her funeral 
pyre, will there not be sparks flying! Alas, 
some millions of men, and among them such 
as a Napoleon, have already been licked into 
that high-eddying Flame,Jand like moths con- 
sumed there. Still also have we to fear that 
incautious beards will get singed. 

*' For the rest, in what year of grace such 
Phoenix cremation will be completed, you need 
not ask. The law of Perseverance is among 
the deepest in man : by nature he hates change ; 
seldom will he quit his old house till it has 
actually fallen about his ears. Thus have I 
seen Solemnities linger as Ceremonies, sacred 
Symbols as idle Pageants, to the extent of 
three hundred years and more after all life and 
sacredness had evaporated out of them. And 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 275 

then, finally, what time the Phoenix Death 
Birth itself will require, depends on unseen 
contingencies. — Meanwhile, would Destiny- 
offer Mankind, that after, say two centuries of 
convulsion and conflagration, more or less 
vivid, the firecreation should be accomplished, 
and we to find ourselves again in a Living 
Society, and no longer fighting but working, 
were it not perhaps prudent in Mankind to 
strike the bargain?" 

Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick 
Society should be deliberately burnt (alas, with 
quite other fuel than spicewood) ; in the faith 
that she is a Phoenix; and that a new heaven- 
born young one will rise out of her ashes! We 
ourselves, restricted to the duty of Indicator, 
shall forbear commentary. Meanwhile, will 
not the judicious reader shake his head, and 
reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in 
anger, say or think: From a Doctor utriusqtie 
Juris, titular Professor in a University, and 
man to whom hitherto, for his services, So- 
ciety, bad as she is, has given not only food 
and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco 
and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to 
his benefactress; and less of a blind trust in 
the future, which resembles that rather of a 
philosophical Fatalist and Enthusiast, than of 
a solid householder paying scot-and-lot in a 
Christian country. 



276 SARTOR RESARTUS, 



CHAPTER VI. 

OLD CLOTHES. 

As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though 
a sansculottist, is in practice probably the polit- 
est man extant: his whole heart and life are 
penetrated and informed with the spirit of 
politeness ; a noble natural Courtesy shines 
through him, beautifying his vagaries; like 
sun-light, making a rosy-fingered, rainbow- 
dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds ; nay, 
brightening London-smoke itself into gold 
vapor, as from the crucible of an alchemist. 
Hear in what earnest, though fantastic wise 
he expresses himself on this head: 

"Shall Courtesy be done only to the rich, 
and only by the rich? In Good-breeding, 
which differs, if at all, from High- breeding, 
only as it gracefully remembers the rights of 
others, rather than gracefully insists on its 
own rights, I discern no special connection 
with wealth or birth : but rather that it lies in 
human nature itself, and is due from all men 
toward all men.; Of a truth, were your 
Schoolmaster at his post, and worth anything 
when there, this, \vith so much else, would be 
reformed. Nay, each man were then also his 
neighbor's schoolmaster; till at length a rude- 
visaged unmannered Peasant could no more be 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 277 

met with, than a Peasant unacquainted with 
botanical Physiology, or who felt not that the 
clod he broke was created in Heaven. 

' ' For whether thou bear a scepter or a sledge- 
hammer, art not thou alive; is not this thy 
brother, alive? 'There is but one temple in 
the world,' says Novalis, 'and that temple is 
the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this 
high Form. Bending before men is a rever- 
ence done to this Revelation in the Flesh. ' We 
touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a 
human body. ' 

"On which ground, I would fain carry it 
farther than most do ; and whereas the Eng- 
lish Johnson only bowed to every Clergyman, 
or man with a shovel-hat, I would bow to 
every Man with any sort of hat, or with no hat 
whatever. Is not he a Temple, then ; the vis- 
ible Manifestation and Impersonation of the 
Divinity? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate 
bowing serves not. For there is a Devil 
dwells in man, as well as a Divinity; and too 
often the bow is but pocketed by the former. 
It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which is 
your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these 
times) ; therefore, must we withhold it. 

"The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do 
reverence to those shells and outer Husks of 
the Body, wherein no devilish passion any 
longer lodges, but only the pure emblem and 
effigies of Man; I mean, to Empty, or even to 
Cast Clothes. TSFay, is it not to Clothes that 
most men do reverence: to the fine frogged 
broadcloth, nowise to the 'straddling animal 



278 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a 
Dignitary of? Who ever saw any Lord my- 
lorded in tattered blanket fastened with 
wooden skewer? Nevertheless, I say, there is 
in such worship a shade of hypocrisy, a practi- 
cal deception: for how often does the Body 
appropriate what was meant for the Cloth 
only! Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is 
the essence of all Sin, will perhaps see good to 
take a different course. That reverence which 
cannot act without obstruction and perversion 
when the Clothes are full, may have free 
course when they are empty. Even as, for 
Hindoo Worshipers, the Pagoda is not less 
sacred than the God; so do I, too, worship the 
hollow cloth Garment with equal fervor, as, 
when it contained the Man; nay, with more, 
for I now fear no deception, of m3/self or of 
others. 

"Did not King Toomtabard, or, in other 
words, John Baliol, reign long over Scotland; 
the man John Baliol being quite gone, and 
only the 'Toom Tabard' (Empty Gown) re- 
maining? What still dignity dwells in a suit 
of Cast Clothes! How meekly it bears its hon- 
ors! No haughty looks, no scornful gesture: 
silent and serene, it fronts the world ; neither 
demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. 
The Hat still carries the physiognomy of its 
Head; but the vanity and the stupidity, and 
goose- speech which was the sign of these two, 
are gone. The Coat-arm is stretched out, but 
not to strike; the Breeches, in modest simplic- 
ity, depend at ease, and now at last have a 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 279 

graceful flow; the Waistcoat hides no evil pas- 
sion, no riotous desire; hunger or thirst now 
dwells not in it. Thus all is purged from the 
grossness of sense, for the carking cares and 
foul vices of the World ; and rides there, on its 
Clothes Horse, as, on a Pegasus, might some 
skyey Messenger, or purified Apparition, visit- 
ing our low Earth. 

"Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous 
tuberosity of Civilized Life, the Capital of Eng- 
land; and meditated, and questioned Destiny, 
under that ink-sea of vapor, black, thick and 
multifarious as Spartan broth ; — and was one 
lone soul amid those grinding millions; often 
have I turned into their Old-Clothes Market to 
worship. With awe-struck heart I walk through 
that Monmouth Street, with its empty Suits, 
as through a Sanhedrim of stainless Ghosts. 
Silent are they, but expressive in their silence ; 
the past v/itnesses and instruments of Woe 
and Joy, or Passions, Virtues, Crimes, and all 
the fathomless tumult of Good and Evil in 'the 
Prison men call Life.' Friends! trust not the 
heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are 
not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, 
that bearded Jewish High-priest, who with 
hoarse voice, like some Angel of Doom, sum- 
mons them from the four winds! On his head, 
like the Pope, he has three Hats, — a real 
triple tiara; on either hand are the similitude 
of wings, whereon the summoned Garments 
come to alight; and ever, as he slowly cleaves 
the air, sounds forth his deep fateful note, as 
if through a trumpet he were proclaiming: 



280 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

'Ghosts of Life, come to Judgment!' Reck 
not, ye fluttering Ghosts: he will purify you in 
his Purgatory, with fire and with water; and, 
one day, new-created ye shall reappear. O, 
let him in whom the flame of Devotion is ready 
to go out, who has never worshiped, and knows 
not what to worship, pace and repace, with 
austerest thought, the pavement of Monmouth 
Street, and say whether his heart and his eyes 
still continue dry. If Field Lane with its long 
fluttering rows of yellow handkerchiefs, be a 
Dionysius' Ear, Where, in stifled jarring hub- 
bub, we hear the Indictment which Poverty 
and Vice bring against lazy Wealth, that it 
has left them there cast out and trodden under 
foot of Want, Darkness and the Devil, — then 
is Monmouth Street a Mirza's Hill, where, in 
motley vision the whole Pageant of Existence 
passes awfully before us; with its wail and 
jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church- 
bells and gallows-ropes, farce-tragedy, beast- 
godhood, — the Bedlam of Creation!" 

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this 
will seem overcharged. We too have walked 
through Monmouth Street; but with little 
feeling of "Devotion:" probably in part be- 
cause the contemplative process is so fatally 
broken in upon by the brood of money-chang- 
ers who nestle in that Church, and importune 
the worshiper with merely secular proposals. 
Whereas Teufelsdrockh might be in that happy 
middle state, which leaves to the Clothes- 
broker no hope either of sale or of purchase, 
and so be allowed to linger there without mo- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 281 

lestation. — Something we would have given to 
see the little philosophical figure, with its 
steeple-hat and loose flowing skirts, and eyes in 
a fine frenzy, "pacing and repacing in austerest 
thought" that foolish Street; which to him was 
a true Delphic avenue, and supernatural Whis- 
pering-gallery, where the "Ghosts of Life" 
rounded strange secrets in his ear. O thou 
philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that listenest while 
others only gabble, and with thy quick tym- 
panum hearest the grass grow ! 

At the same time, is it not strange that, in 
Paper-bag Documents, destined for an English 
work, there exists nothing like an authentic 
diary of this his sojourn in London ; and of his 
Meditations among the Clothes-shops only the 
obscurest emblematic shadows? Neither, in 
conversation (for, indeed, he was not a man to 
pester you with his Travels), have we heard 
him more than allude to the subject. 

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninter- 
esting that we here find how early the signifi- 
cance of Clothes had dawned on the now so dis- 
tinguished Clothes- Professor. Might w^e but 
fancy it to have been even in Monmouth 
Street, at the bottom of our own English 
"ink-sea," that this remarkable Volume first 
took being, and shot forth its salient point in 
his soul, — as in Chaos did the Egg of Eros, 
one day to be hatched into a Universe ! 



282 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 

For US, who happen to live while the World- 
Phoenix is burning herself, and burning so 
slowly that, as Teufelsdrockh calculates, it 
were a handsome bargain would she engage to 
have done "within two centuries," there 
seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not alto- 
gether so, however, does the Professor figure 
it. "In the living subject," says he, "change 
is wont to be gradual: thus, while the serpent 
sheds its old skin, the new is already formed 
beneath. Little knowest thou of the burning 
of a World Phoenix, who fanciest that she 
must first burn-out, and lie as a dead cinerous 
heap; and therefrom the young one start up 
by miracle, and fly heavenward. Far other- 
wise! In that fire whirlwind, Creation and 
Destruction proceed together; ever as the 
ashes of the Old are blown about, do organic 
filaments of the New mysteriously spin them- 
selves: and amid the rushing and the waying 
of the Whirlwind-element come tones of a 
melodious Death-song, which end not but in 
tones of a more melodious Birth-song. Nay, 
look into the Fire-whirlwind with thy own 
eyes, and thou wilt see. Let us actually look, 
then: to poor individuals, who cannot expect 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 283 

to live two centuries, those same organic fila- 
ments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will 
be the best part of the spectacle. First, there- 
fore, this of Mankind in general: "In vain 
thou deniest it," says the Professor; "thou art 
my Brother. Thy very Hatred, thy very 
Envy, those foolish Lies thou tellest of me in 
thy splenetic humor: what is all this but an in- 
verted Sym.pathy? Were I a Steam-engine, 
wouldst thou take the trouble to tell lies of 
me? Not thou! I should grind all unheeded, 
whether badly or well. "Wondrous truly are 
the bonds that unite us one and all ; whether 
by the soft binding of Love, or the iron chain- 
ing of Necessity, as we like to choose it. More 
than once have I said to myself, of some per- 
haps whimsically strutting Figure, such as 
provokes whimsical thoughts: 'Wert thou, my 
little Brotherkin, suddenly covered-up within 
the largest imaginable Glass-bell, — what a 
thing it were, not for thyself only, but for the 
world ! Post Letters, more or fewer, from all 
the four winds, impinge against thy Glass 
walls, but have to drop unread: neither from 
within comes there question or response, into 
any Postbag; thy Thoughts fall into no friendly 
ear or heart, thy Manufacture into no purchas- 
ing hand ; thou art no longer a circulating ven- 
ous-arterial Heart, that, taking and giving, 
circulatest through all Space, and all Time; 
there has a Hole fallen-out in the immeasur- 
able, universal World-tissue, which must be 
darned-up again!' "Such venous-arterial cir- 
culation, of Letters, verbal Messages, paper 



284 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and other Packages, going out from him and 
coming in, are a blood-circulation, visible to 
the eye ; but the finer nervous circulation, by 
which all things, the minutest that he does, 
minutely influence all men, and the very look 
of his face blesses or curses whomso it lights 
on, and so generates ever new blessing or new 
cursing ; all this you cannot see, but only im- 
agine, I say, there is not a red Indian, hunt- 
ing by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel with his 
squaw, but the whole world must smart for it: 
will not the price of beaver rise? It is a 
mathematical fact that the casting of this peb- 
ble from my hand alters the center of gravity 
of the Universe. "If now an existing gener- 
ation of men stand so woven together, not less 
indissolubly does generation with generation. 
Hast thou ever meditated on that word, Tra- 
dition; how we inherit not Life only, but all 
the garniture and form of Life ; and work, and 
speak, and even think and feel, as our Fathers, 
and primeval grandfathers, from the begin- 
ning, have given it us? — Who printed thee, for 
example, this unpretending Volume on the 
Philosophy of Clothes? Not the Herren Still- 
schweigen and Company; but Cadmus of 
Thebes, Faust of Mentz, and innumerable 
others whom thou knowest not. Had there 
been no Moesogothic Ulfila, there had been no 
English Shakespeare, or a different one. Sim- 
pleton ! it was Tubalcain that made thy very 
Tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit of 
thine. 

"Yes, truly, if Nature is one, and a liv- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 285 

ing indivisible whole, much more is Mankind, 
the Image that reflects and creates Nature, 
without which Nature were not. As palpable 
life- streams in that wondrous Individual Man- 
kind, among so many life-streams that are not 
palpable, flow on those main-currents of what 
we call Opinion, as preserved in Institutions, 
Polities, Churches, above all in Books. Beau- 
tiful it ' is to understand and know that a 
Thought did never yet die ; that as thou, the 
originator thereof, hast gathered it and created 
it from the whole Past, so thou wilt transmit 
it to the whole Future. It is thus that the 
heroic heart, the seeing eye of the first times, 
still feels and sees in us of the latest; that the 
Wise Man stands ever encompassed, and spir- 
itually embraced, by a cloud of witnesses and 
brothers; and there is a living literal Com- 
munion of Saints wide, as the World itself, and 
as the History of the World. Noteworthy also, 
and serviceable for the progress of this same 
Individual, wilt thou find his subdivision into 
Generations. Generations are as the Days of 
toilsome Mankind: Death and Birth are the 
vesper and the matin bells, that summon Man- 
kind to sleep, and to rise refreshed for new 
advancement. What the Father has made, 
the Son can make and enjoy; but has also 
work of his own appointed him. Thus all 
things wax, and roll onward; Arts, Establish- 
ments, Opinions, nothing is completed, but 
ever completing. Newton has learned to see 
what Kepler saw; but there is also a fresh 
heaven-derived force in Newton; he must 



286 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

mount to still higher points of vision. So, too, 
the Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed 
by an Apostle of the Gentiles. In the busi- 
ness of Destruction, as this also is from time to 
time a necessary work, thou findest a like 
sequence and perseverance : for Luther it was 
as yet hot enough to stand by that burning of 
the Pope's Bull; Voltaire could not warm him- 
self at the glimmering ashes, but required 
quite other fuel. Thus likewise, I note, the 
English Whig has, in the second generation 
become an English Radical; who, in the third 
again, it is to be hoped, will become an English 
Rebuilder. Find Mankind where thou wilt, 
thou findest it in living movement, in prog- 
ress faster or slower ; the Phoenix soars aloft, 
hovers with outstretched wings, filling Earth 
wuth her music; or, as now, she sinks, and 
with spheral swan-song immolates herself in 
flame, that she may soar the higher and sing 
the clearer." Let the friends of social order, 
in such a disastrous period, lay this to heart, 
and derive from it any little comfort they can. 
We subjoin another passage, concerning Titles : 
"Remark, not without surprise," says Teufels- 
drockh, "how all high Titles of Honor come 
hitherto from Fighting. Your Herzog (Duke, 
Dux) is Leader of Armies ; your Earl {Jari) is 
Strong Man ; your Marshal cavalry Horse-shoer. 
A Millennium, or reign of Peace and Wisdom 
having from of old been prophesied, and becom- 
ing now daily more and more indubitable, may 
it not be apprehended that such Fighting-titles 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 287 

will cease to be palatable, and new and higher 
need to be devised? 

"The only Title wherein I, with confidence, 
trace eternity, is that of King. Ko?iig (King), 
2inQ\Qn.i\y Kon?ting, means, Ken-ning (Cunning), 
or which is the same thing, Can-ning. Ever 
must the Sovereign of Man-kind be fitly enti- 
tled King." 

"Well, also," says he elsewhere, "was it writ- 
ten by Theologians: a King rules by divine 
right. He carries in him an authority from God, 
or man will never give it him. Can I choose 
my own King? I can choose my own King 
Popinjay, and play what farce or tragedy I may 
with him : but he who is to be my Ruler, 
whose will is to be higher than my will, was 
chosen for me in Heaven. Neither except in 
such Obedience to the Heaven-chosen is Free- 
dom so much as conceivable. 

The Editor will here admit that, among all 
the wondrous provinces of Teufelsdrockh's 
spiritual world, there is none he walks in with 
such astonishment, hesitation, and even pain, 
as in the Political. How, with our English 
love of Ministry and Opposition, and that gen- 
erous conflict of Parties, mind warming itself 
against mind in their mutual wrestle for the 
Public Good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our 
invaluable Constitution kept warm and alive ; 
how shall we domesticate ourselves in this 
spectral Necropolis, or rather City both of the 
Dead and of the Unborn, where the Present 
seems little other than an inconsiderable Film 



288 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

dividing tne Past and the Future? In those 
dim long-drawn expanses, all is so immeasur- 
able; much so disastrous, ghastly; your very 
radiances and straggling light-beams have a 
supernatural character. And then with such 
an indifference, such a prophetic peacefulness 
(accounting the inevitably coming as already 
here, to him all one whether it be distant by 
centuries or only by days), does he sit; and 
live, you would say, rather in any other age 
than in his own! It is our painful duty to 
announce, or repeat, that, looking into this 
man, we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning, 
inextinguishable Radicalism., such as fills us 
with shuddering admiration. 

Thus, for example, he appears to make little 
even of the Elective Franchise; at least so we 
interpret the following: "Satisfy yourselves," 
he says, "by universal, indubitable experi- 
ment, even as ye are now doing or will do, 
whether Freedom, heaven-born and leading 
heavenward, and so vitally essential for us 
all, cannot peradventure be mechanically 
hatched and brought to light in that same Bal- 
lot-Box of yours; or at worst, in some other 
discoverable or devisable Box, Edifice, or 
Steam-mechanism. It were a mighty conve- 
nience ; and beyond all feats of manufacture 
witnessed hitherto." Is Teufelsdrockh ac- 
quainted with the British Constitution, even 
slightly? — He says, under another figure : "But 
after all, were the problem, as indeed it now 
everywhere is, To rebuild your old house from 
the top downward (since you must live in it 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 289 

the while), what better, what other, than the 
Representative Machines will serve yonr turn? 
Meanwhile, however, mock me not with the 
name of Free, 'when you have but knit-up my 
chains into ornamental festoons.' " — Or what 
will any member of the Peace Society make of 
such an assertion as this: "The lower people 
everywhere desire War. Not so unwisely; 
there is then a demand for lower people — to be 
shot!" 

Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those 
soul-confusing labyrinths of speculative Radi- 
calism, into somewhat clearer regions. Here, 
looking round, as was our hest, for "organic 
filaments," we ask, may not this, touching 
"Hero-worship" be of the number! It seems 
of a cheerful character; yet so quaint, so mys- 
tical, one knows not what, or how little may 
lie under it. Our readers shall look with their 
own eyes: 

"True is it that, in these days, man can do 
almost all things, only not obey. True like- 
wise that whoso cannot obey cannot be free, 
still less bear rule ; he that is the inferior of 
nothing, can be the superior of nothing, the 
equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe not 
that man has lost his faculty of Reverence ; 
that if it slumber in him, it has gone dead. 
Painful for man is that same rebellious Indepen- 
dence, when it has become ineviable; only in 
loving companionship with his fellows does he 
feel safe; only in reverently bowing down be- 
fore the Higher does he feel himself exalted. 

"Or what if the character of our so troublous 

19 Sartor Kesartus 



^90 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Era lay even in this: that man had forever cast 
away Fear, which is the lower ; but not yet 
risen into perennial Reverence, which is the 
higher and highest? 

''Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly 
has Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man 
ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Before no 
faintest revelation of the Godlike did he ever 
stand irreverent ; least of all, when the Godlike 
showed itself revealed in his fellow-man. 
Thus is there a true religious Loyalty forever 
rooted in his heart; nay, in all ages, even in 
ours, it manifests itself as a more or less ortho- 
dox Hero-worship. In which fact, that Hero- 
worship exists, has existed, and will forever 
exist, universally among Mankind, mayest thou 
discern the corner-stone of living-rock, where- 
on all Polities for the remotest time may stand 
secure. ^ * 

Do our readers discern any such corner-stojie 
or even so much as what Teufelsdrockh is look- 
ing at? He exclaims, "Or hast thou forgotten 
Paris and Voltaire? How the aged, withered 
man, though but a Skeptic, Mocker, and mil- 
linery Court-poet, yet because even he seemed 
the Wisest, Best, could drag mankind at his 
chariot- wheels, so that princes coveted a smile 
from him, and the loveliest of France would 
have laid their hair beneath his feet! All 
Paris was one vast Temple of Hero-worship; 
though their Divinity, moreover was of feature 
too apish. 

**Butifsuch things," continues he, "were 
•done in the drv tree, what will be done in the 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 291 

green? If, in the most parched season of 
Man's History, in the most parched spot of 
Europe, when Parisian life was at best but a 
scientific Hortus Siccus, bedizened with some 
Italian Gum-flowers, such virtue could come 
out of it ; what is to be looked for when Life 
again waves leafy and bloomy, and your Hero- 
Divinity shall have nothing apelike, but be' 
wholly human? Know that there is in man 
a quite indestructible Reverence for whatso- 
ever holds of Heaven, or even plausible coun- 
terfeits such holding. Show the dullest clod- 
pole, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a 
soul higher than himself is actually here; 
were his knees stiffened into brass, he must 
down and worship. " 

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, 
mysteriously spinning themselves, some will 
perhaps discover in the following passage : 

"There is no Church, sayest thou? The 
voice of Prophecy has gone dumb? This is 
even what I dispute : but in any case, hast thou 
not still Preaching enough? A Preaching 
Friar settles himself in every village; and 
builds a pulpit, which he calls a Newspaper. 
Therefrom he preaches what most momentous 
doctrine is in him, for man's salvation; and 
dost not thou listen, and believe? Look well, 
thou seest everywhere a new Clergy of the 
Mendicant Orders, some bare- footed, some 
almost bare-backed, fashion itself into shape, 
and teach and preach, zealously enough, for 
copper alms and the love of God. These break 
in pieces the ancient idols ; and, though them- 



292 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

selves too often reprobate, as idol-breakers are 
wont to be, mark out the sites of new 
Churches, where the true God-ordained, that 
are to follow, may find audience, and minister. 
Said I not, Before the old skin was shed, the 
new had formed itself beneath it?" 

Perhaps also in the following; wherewith 
we now hasten to knit-up this raveled sleeve : 

"But there is no religion?" reiterates the 
Professor. "Fool! I tell thee, there is. 
Hast thou well considered all that lies in this 
immeasurable froth-ocean we name Litera- 
ture? Fragments of a genuine Church-Homil- 
etic lie scattered there, which Time will assort : 
nay, fractions even of a Liturgy could I point 
out. And knowest thou no Prophet, even in 
the vesture, environment, and dialect of this 
age? None to whom the Godlike had revealed 
itself, through all meanest and highest forms 
of the Common ; and by him been again pro- 
phetically revealed : in whose inspired melody, 
even in these rag-gathering and rag-burning 
days, Man's Life again begins, were it but afar 
off, to be divine? Knowest thou none such? 
I know him, and name him — Goethe. 

"But thou as yet standest in no Temple; 
joinest in no Psalm-worship ; feelest well that, 
where there is no ministering Priest, the 
people perish? Be of comfort! Thou art not 
alone, if thou have Faith. Speak we not of a 
Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, 
accompanying and brother-like embracing 
thee, so thou be worthy? Their heroic Suffer- 
ings rise up melodiously together to Heaven, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 293 

out of all lands, and out of all times, as a 
sacred Miserere : their heroic Actions also, as a 
boundless everlasting Psalm of Triumph. 
Neither say that thou hast now no Sym.bol of 
the Godlike. Is not God's Universe a Symbol 
of the Godlike ; is not Immensity a Temple ; 
is not Man's History, and Men's History, a 
perpetual Evangel? Listen, and for organ- 
music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morn- 
ing Stars sing together." 



294 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 

It is in his stupendous Section, headed Natu- 
ral Supernaturalism, that the Professor first 
becomes a Seer ; and, after long effort, such as 
we have witnessed, finally subdues under his 
feet this refractory Clothes-Philosophy, and 
takes victorious possession thereof. Phan- 
tasms enough he has had to struggle with ; 
"Cloth- webs and Cob-webs," of Imperial 
Mantles, Superannuated Symbols, and what 
not; yet still did he courageously pierce 
through. Nay, worst of all, two quite myste- 
rious, world-embracing Phantasms, Time and 
Space, have ever hovered round him, perplex- 
ing and bewildering: but with these also he 
now resolutely grapples, these also he victori- 
ously rends asunder. In a word, he has looked 
fixedly on Existence, till, one after another, 
its earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted 
away ; and now, to his rapt vision, the interior 
celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed. 

Here, therefore, properly it is that the Phi- 
losophy of Clothes attains to Transcendentalism 
this last lead, can we but clear it, takes us 
safe into the promised land, where Palingenesia^ 
in all senses, may be considered as beginning. 
** Courage, then!" may our Diogenes exclaim, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 295 

with better right than Diogenes the First once 
did. This stupendous Section, we after long 
painful meditation, have found not to be un- 
intelligible ; but, on the contrary, to grow 
clear, nay radiant, and all-illuminating. Let 
the reader, turning on it what utmost force of 
speculative intellect is in him, do his part ; as 
we, by judicious selection and adjustment, shall 
study to do ours : 

"Deep has been, and is, the significance of 
Miracles," thus quietly begins the Professor; 
*'far deeper perhaps than we imagine. Mean- 
while, the question of questions were: What 
specially is a Miracle? To that Dutch King 
of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle ; whoso 
had carried with him an air-pump, and viol of 
vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. 
To my Horse again, who unhappily is still 
more unscientific, do not I work a miracle, and 
magical 'Open sesame!' every time I please to 
pay two-pence, and open for him an impass- 
able Schlagbauniy or shut Turnpike? 

" 'But is not a real Miracle simply a viola- 
tion of the Laws of Nature?' ask several. 
Whom I answer by this new question: What 
are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps the 
rising of one from the dead were no violation 
of these Laws, but a confirmation : were some 
far deeper Law, now first penetrated into, and 
by Spiritual Force, even as the rest have all 
been, brought to bear on us with its Material 
Force. 

"Here too may some inquire, not without 
astonishment : On what ground shall one, that 



296 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

can make Iron swim, come and declare that 
therefore he can teach Religion? To us, 
truly, of the Nineteenth Century, such decla- 
ration were inept enough; which nevertheless 
to our fathers, of the First Century, was full 
of meaning. 

*' 'But is it not the deepest Law of Nature 
that she be constant?' cries an illuminated 
class : ' Is not the Machine of the Universe fixed 
to move by unalterable rules?' Probably 
enough, good friends: nay I, too, must believe 
that the God, whom ancient inspired men 
assert to be 'without variableness or shadow of 
turning,' does indeed never change; that 
Nature, that the Universe, which no one whom 
it so pleases can be prevented from calling a 
Machine, does move by the most unalterable 
rules. And now of you, too, I make the old 
inquiry: What those same unalterable rules, 
forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, 
may possibly be? 

"They stand written in our Works of Sci- 
ence, say you ; in the accumulated records of 
Man's Experience? — Was Man with his Experi- 
ence present at the Creation, then, to see how 
it all went on? Have any deepest scientific 
individuals yet dived down to the foundations 
of the Universe, and gauged everything there? 
Did the Maker take them into His counsel; 
that they read His ground-plan of the incom- 
prehensible All; and can say, This stands 
marked therein, and no more than this? Alas, 
not in anywise ! These scientific individuals 
have been nowhere but where we also are; 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 297 

have seen some hand-breadths deeper than we 
see into the Deep that is infinite, without bot- 
tom as without shore. 

*' Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he 
exhibits that certain Planets, with their Satel- 
lites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at a rate 
and in a course, which, by greatest good for- 
tune, he and the like of him have succeeded 
in detecting, is to me as precious as to an- 
other. But is this what thou namest 'Mechan- 
ism of the Heavens,' and 'System of the 
World;' this, wherein Sirius and all the Pleia- 
des, and all Herschel's Fifteen-thousand Suns 
per minute, being left out, some paltry hand- 
ful of Moons, and inert Balls, had been — 
looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodi- 
acal Way-bill ; so that we can now prate of their 
Whereabout; their How, their Why, their 
What, being hid from us, as in the signless 
Inane? 

"System of Nature! To the wisest man, 
wide as is his vision, Nature remains of quite 
infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; and 
all Experience thereto limits itself to some 
few computed centuries and measured square- 
miles. The course of Nature's phases, on this 
our little fraction of a Planet, is partially known 
to us: but who knows what deeper courses 
these depend on ; what infinitely larger Cycle 
(of causes) our little Epicycle revolves on? To 
the Minnow every cranny and pebble, and 
quality and accident, of its little native Creek 
may have become familiar: but does the Min- 
now understand the Ocean Tides and periodic 

20 Sartor Resartus 



■298 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Currents, the Trade- winds, and Monsoons, and 
Moon's Eclipses; by all which the condition of 
its little Creek is regulated, and may, from 
time to time (unmiraculously enough), be quite 
overset and reversed? Such a m.innow is 
Man ; his Creek this Planet Earth ; his Ocean 
the immeasurable All ; his Monsoons and Peri- 
odic Currents the mysterious Course of Provi- 
dence through ^ons of ^Eons. 

"We speak of the Volume of Nature: and 
truly a Volume it is, — whose Author and 
Writer is God. To read it ! Dost thou, does 
man, so much as well know the Alphabet 
thereof? With its Words, Sentences, and grand 
descriptive Pages, poetical and Philosophical, 
spread out through Solar Systems, and Thou- 
sands of Years, we shall not try thee. It is a 
Volume written in celestial hieroglyphs, in 
the true Sacred-writing; of which even Pro- 
phets are happy that they can read here a line, 
and there a line. As for your Institutes, and 
Academies of Science, they strive bravely; 
and, from amid the thick-crowded, inextricably 
intertwisted hieroglyphic writings, pick out, 
by dexterous combination, some Letters in the 
vulgar Character, and therefrom put together 
this and the other economic Recipe, of high 
avail in Practice. That Nature is more than 
some boundless Volume of such Recipes, or 
huge, well-nigh inexhaustible Domestic Cook- 
ery Book, of which the whole secret will in 
this manner one day evolve itself, the fewest 
« dream. 

"CuvStom," continues the Professor, "doth 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 299 

make dotards. of us all. Consider well, thou 
wilt find that Custom is the greatest of 
Weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all the 
Spirits of the Universe ; whereby, indeed, 
these dwell with us visibly, as ministering ser- 
vants, in our houses and workshops; but their 
spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever 
hidden. Philosophy complains that Custom 
has hoodwinked us, from the first ; that we do 
everything by Custom, even Believe by it; 
that our very Axioms, let us boast of Free- 
thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such 
Beliefs as we have never heard questioned. 
Nay, what is Philosophy throughout but a 
continual battle against Custom; an ever- 
renewed effort to transcend the sphere of Blind 
Custom, and so become Transcendental? 

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerde- 
main-tricks of Custom: but of all these, per- 
haps the cleverest is her knack of persuad- 
ing us that the Miraculous, by simple repe- 
tition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, it is by 
this means we live ; for man must work as well 
as wonder; and herein is Custom so far a kind 
nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But 
she is a fond, foolish nurse, or rather we are 
false, foolish nurslings, when, in our resting 
and reflecting hours, we prolong the same 
deception. Am I to view the Stupendous with 
stupid indifference, because I have seen it 
twice, or two-hundred, or two-million times? 
There is no reason in Nature or in Art why 
I should: unless, indeed, I am a mere Work- 
Machine, for whom the divine gift of 



300 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Thought were no other than the terrestrial 
gift of Steam is to the Steam-engine ; a power 
whereby cotton might be spun, and money 
and money's worth realized. 

"Notable enough too, here as elsewhere, 
wilt thou find the potency of Names; which 
indeed are but one kind of such custom- 
woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witchcraft, 
and all manner of Specter-work, and Demon- 
ology, we have now named Madness, and Dis- 
eases of the Nerves. Seldom reflecting that 
still the new question comes upon us: What 
is Madness, what are Nerves? Ever, as be- 
fore, does Madness remain a mysterious ter- 
rific, altogether infernal, boiling-up of the 
Nether Chaotic Deep, through this fair-painted 
Vision of Creation, which svdms thereon, 
which we name the Real. Was Luther's Pic- 
ture of the Devil less a Reali.ty, whether it 
were formed within the bodily eye, or without 
it? In every the wisest Soul lies a whole world 
of internal Madness, an authentic Demon-Em- 
pire; out of which, indeed, his world of Wis- 
dom has been creatively built together, and 
now rests there, as on its dark foundations does 
a habitable flowery Earth-rind. 

"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, for 
hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, are 
your two grand fundamental world-enveloping 
Appearances, Space and Time. These, as 
spun and woven for us from before Birth itself, 
to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, 
and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 301 

universal canvas, or warp and woof, whereby 
all minor Illusions, in this Phantasm Existence, 
weave and paint themselves. In vain, while 
here on Earth, shall you endeavor to strip 
them off; you can, at best, but rend them 
asunder for moments, and look through. 

"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which 
when he put on, and wished himself Any- 
w^here, behold he was There. By this means 
had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he had 
annihilated Space ; for him there was no Where, 
but all was Here. Were a Hatter to establish 
himself, in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, 
and make felts of this sort for all mankind, 
what a world vy^e should have of it! Still 
stranger, should, on the opposite side of the 
street, another Hatter establish himself; and, 
as his fellow-craftsman made Space-annihilat- 
ing Hats, make Time-annihilating! Of both 
would I purchase, were it with my last gros- 
chen; but chiefly of this latter. To clap- on 
your felt, and, simply by wishing that you were 
Anywhere, straightway to be There! Next to 
clap-on your other felt, and, simply by wishing 
that you were Anywhen, straightway to be 
Then ! This were indeed the grander : shooting 
at will from the Fire-Creation of the World to 
its Fire- Consummation; here historically pres- 
ent in the First Century, conversing face to 
face with Paul and Seneca, there prophetically 
in the Thirty-first, conversing also face to face 
with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet stand 
hidden in the depth of that late Time! 

"Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unim- 



302 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

aginable? Is the Past annihilated, then or 
only past; is the Future nonextant, or only 
future? Those mystic faculties of thine, Mem- 
ory and Hope, already answer: already 
through those mystic avenues, thou the Earth- 
blinded summonest both Past and Future, 
and communest with them, though as yet 
darkly, and with mute beckonings. The cur- 
tains of Yesterday drop down, the curtains of 
To-morrow roll up; but Yesterday and To- 
morrow both are. Pierce through the Time- 
element, glance into the Eternal. Believe 
what thou findest written in the sanctuaries of 
Man's Soul, even as all Thinkers, in all ages, 
have devoutly read it there: that Time and 
Space are not God, but creations of God; that 
with God as it is a universal Here, so is it an 
everlasting Now. 

''And seest thou therein any glimpse of 
Immortality?' — O Heaven! Is the white Tomb 
of our Loved One, who died from our arms, 
and had to be left behind us there, which rises 
in the distance, like a pale, mournfully reced- 
ing Milestone, to tell how many toilsome 
uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone, 
— but a pale spectral Illusion! Is the lost 
Friend still mysteriously Here, even as we are 
Here mysteriously, with God! — Know of a 
truth that only the Time- shadows have per- 
ished, or are perishable; that the real Being of 
whatever was, and whatever is, and whatever 
will be, is even now and forever. This, should 
it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder at 
thy leisure ; for the next twenty years, for the 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 303 

next twenty centuries: believe it thou must: 
understand it thou canst not. 

"That the Thought-forms, Space and Time, 
wherein, once for all, we are sent into this 
Earth to live, should condition and determine 
our whole Practical reasonings, conceptions, 
and imagings or imaginings, seems alto- 
gether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that 
they should, furthermore, usurp such sway 
over pure spiritual Meditation, and blind us to 
the wonder everywhere lying close on us, 
seems nowise so. Admit Space and Time to 
their due rank as Forms of Thought; nay, 
even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank 
of Realities: and consider, then, with thyself 
how their thin disguises hide from us the 
brightest God-effulgences! Thus, were it not 
miraculous, could I stretch forth my hand and 
clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest me daily 
stretch forth my hand and therewith clutch 
many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. 
Art thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that 
the Miracle lies in miles of distance, or in 
pounds avoirdupois of weight; and not to see 
that the true inexplicable God-revealing Mir- 
acle lies in this; that I can stretch forth my 
hand at all ; that I have free Force to clutch 
aught therewith? Innumerable other of this 
sort are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding 
stupefactions, which Space practices on us. 

"Still worse is it with regard to Time. Your 
grand anti-magician, and universal wonder- 
hider, is this same lying Time. Had we but 
the Time-annihilating Hat, to put on for once 



304 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

only, we should see ourselves in a World of 
Miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic 
Thaumaturgy, and feats of Magic, were out- 
done. But unhappily we have not such a Hat ; 
and man, poor fool that he is, can seldom and 
scantily help himself without one. 

"Were it not wonderful, for instance, had 
Orpheus, or Amphion, built the walls of Thebes 
by the mere sound of his Lyre? Yet tell me, 
Who built these walls of Weissnichtwo ; sum- 
moning out all the sandstone rocks, to dance 
along from the Steinbruch (now a huge Troglo- 
dyte Chasm, with frightful green-mantled 
pools) ; and shape themselves into Doric and 
Ionic pillars, squared ashlar houses and noble 
streets? Was it not the still higher Orpheus, 
or Orpheuses, who, in past centuries, by the 
divine Music of wisdom, succeeded in civilizing 
Man? Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, 
eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere-mel- 
ody, flowing in wild native tones, took captive 
and ravished souls of men ; and, being of a 
truth sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, 
though now with thousandfold accompani- 
ments, and rich symphonies, through all our 
hearts; and modulates, and divinely leads 
them. Is that a wonder, which happens in 
two hours ; and does it cease to be wonderful 
if happening in two million? Not only was 
Thebes built by the music of an Orpheus; but 
without the music of some inspired Orpheus 
was no city ever built, no work that man glor- 
ies in ever done. 

"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; glance, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 305 

if thou have eyes, from the near moving-catise 
to its far- distant Mover : The stroke that came 
transmitted through a whole galaxy of elastic 
balls, was it less a stroke than if the last ball 
only had been struck, and set flying? O, could 
I (with the Time-annihilating Hat) transport 
thee direct from the Beginnings to the End- 
ino^s, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy 
heart set flaming in the Light-sea of celestial 
wonder! Then sawest thou that this fair Uni- 
verse, were it in the meanest province thereof, 
is in very deed the star doomed City of God; 
that through every star, through every grass- 
blade, and most through every Living Soul, the 
glory of a present God still beams. But Na- 
ture, which is the Time-vesture of God, and 
reveals Him to the wise, hides Him from the 
foolish. 

''Again, could anything be more miraculous 
than an actual authentic Ghost? The English 
Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but 
could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and 
thence to the church-vaults^ and tapped on 
coflins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with 
the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look 
round him into that full tide of human Life he 
so loved ; did he never so much as look into 
Himself? The good Doctor was a Ghost, as 
actual and authentic as heart could wish ; well- 
nigh a million of Ghosts were traveling the 
streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep 
away the illusion of Time ; compress the three- 
score years into three minutes : what else was 
he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, 



306 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

that are shaped into a body, into an Appear- 
ance ; and that fade away again into air and 
Invisibility? This is no metaphor, it is a 
simple scientific fact ; we start out of Nothing- 
ness, take figure, and are Apparitions; round 
us, as round the veriest specter^ is Eternity; 
and to Eternity minutes are as years and aeons. 
Come there not tones of Love and Faith, as 
from celestial harp-strings, like the Song of 
beautified Souls? And again, do not we 
squeak and jibber (in our discordant, screech- 
owlish debatings and recriminatings) ; and 
glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful, or 
uproar {polterri), and revel in our mad Dance 
of the Dead, — till the scent of the morning air 
summons us to our still Home ; and dreamy 
Night, becomes awake and Day? Where now 
is Alexander of Macedon : does the steel Host, 
that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at Issus and 
Arbela, remained behind him ; or have they 
all vanished utterly, even as perturbed Gob- 
lins must? Napoleon too, and his Moscow 
Retreats and Austerlitz Campaigns? Was it 
all other than the veriest Specter-hunt; which 
has now, with its howling tumult that made 
Night hideous, flitted away? — Ghosts! There 
are nigh a thousand million walking the Earth 
openly at noontide; some half-hundred have 
vanished from it, some half-hundred have 
arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 

"O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to 
consider that we only carry each a future Ghost 
within him; but are, in very deed. Ghosts! 
These Limbs, whence had we them; this 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 307 

stormy Force ; this lifeblood with its burning 
Passion? They are dust and shadow; a Sha- 
dow-system gathered round our Me; wherein, 
through some moments or years, the Divine 
Essence is to be revealed in the Flesh. That 
warrior on his strong war-horse, fire flashes 
through his eyes ; force dwells in his arm and 
heart : but warrior and war-horse are a vision ; 
a revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they 
tread the Earth, as if it were a firm substance: 
fool ! the Earth is but a film ; it cracks in 
twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond 
plummet's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy 
herself will not follow them. A little while 
ago, they were not; a little while, and they 
are not, their very ashes are not. 

"So has it been from the beginning, so will 
it be to the end. Generation after generation 
takes to itself the Form of a Body ; and forth- 
issuing from Cimmerian Night, on Heaven's 
mission appears. What Force and Fire is in 
each he expends: one grinding in the mill of 
Industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy 
Alpine heights of Science ; one madly dashed 
in pieces on the rocks of Strife, in war with 
his fellow: — and then the Heaven-sent is 
recalled; his earthly Vesture falls away, and 
soon even to Sense becomes a vanished Sha- 
dow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild- 
thundering train of Heaven's Artillery, does 
this mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, 
in long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, 
through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a God- 
created, fire-reathing Spirit-host, we emerge 



308 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

from the Inane; haste stormfully across the 
astonished Earth ; then plunge again into the 
Inane. Earth's mountains are leveled, and 
her seas filled up, in our passage: can the 
"Earth, which is but dead and a vision, resist 
Spirits which have reality and are alive? On 
the hardest adamant some footprint of us is 
stamped-in ; the last Rear of the host will read 
traces of the earliest Van. But whence? — O 
Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; Faith 
knows not; only that it is through Mystery to 
Mystery, from God and to God. 

' ' 'We are such stuff, 
As dreams are made of, and our little Life, 
Is rounded with a sleep!' " 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 309 



CHAPTER IX. 

CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 

Here, then, arises the so momentous ques- 
tion: Have many British Readers actually 
arrived v^ith us at the new promised country; 
is the Philosophy of Clothes now at last open- 
ing around them? Long and adventurous has 
the journey been : from those outmost vulgar, 
palpable Woolen Hulls of Man ; through his 
wondrous Flesh-Garments, and his wondrous 
Social Garnitures; inward to the Garments 
of his very Soul's Soul, to Time and Space 
themselves! And now does the spiritual, 
eternal Essence of Man, and of Mankind, bared 
of such wrappages, begin in any measure to 
reveal itself? Can many readers discern, as 
through a glass darkly, in huge wavering out- 
lines, some primeval rudiments of Man's 
Being, what is changeable divided from what 
is unchangeable? Does that Earth-Spirit's 
speech in Faust, — 

" 'Tis thus at the roaring Loom of Time I ply, 

And weave for God the Garment thou see'st Him by;" 

or that other thousand- times repeated speech 
of the Magician, Shakespeare, — 



310 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

"And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloudcapt Towers, the gorgeous Palaces, 
The solemn Temples, the great Globe itself, 
And all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a wrack behind;" 

begin to have some meaning for ns? In a 
word, do we at length stand safe in the far 
region of Poetic Creation and Palingenesia, 
where that Phoenix Death-Birth of Human 
Society, and of all Human Things, appears 
possible, is seen to be inevitable? 

Along this most insufficient, unheard-of 
Bridge, which the Editor, by Heaven's bless- 
ing, has now seen himself enabled to conclude 
if not complete, it cannot be his sober calcula- 
tion, but only his fond hope, that many have 
traveled without accident. No firm arch, over- 
spanning the Impassable with paved highway, 
could the Editor construct ; only as was said 
some zig-zag series of rafts floating tumul- 
tuously thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft 
to raft were often of a breakneck character; 
the darkness, the nature of the element, all was 
against us! 

Nevertheless, may not here and there one 
of a thousand, provided with a discursiveness 
of intellect rare in our day, have cleared the 
passage, in spite of all? Happy few! little 
band of Friends! be welcome, be of courage. 
By degrees, the eye grows accustomed to its 
new Whereabout; the hand can stretch itself 
forth to work there : it is in this grand and 
indeed highest work of Palingenesia that ye 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 311 

shall labor, each according to ability. New 
laborers will arrive; new Bridges will be built; 
nay, may not our own poor rope-and-raft 
Bridge, in your passings and repassings, be 
mended in many a point, till it grow quite 
firm, passable even for the halt? 

Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude 
that started with us, joyous and full of hope, 
where now is the innumerable remainder, 
whom we see no longer by our side? The most 
have recoiled, and stand gazing afar off, in 
unsympathetic astonishment, at our career: 
not a few, pressing forward with more cour- 
age, have missed footing, or leaped short; and 
now swim weltering in the Chaos-flood, some 
toward this shore, some toward that. To 
these also a helping hand should be held out; 
at least some word of encouragement be said. 

Or, to speak without metaphor, with which 
mode of utterance Teufelsdrockh unhappily 
has somewhat infected us, — can it be hidden 
from the Editor that many a British Reader 
sits reading quite bewildered in head, and 
afflicted rather than instructed by the present 
Work? Yes, long ago has many a British 
Reader been, as now, demanding with some- 
thing like a snarl : Where to does all this lead ; 
or what use is in it? 

In the way of replenishing thy purse, or 
otherwise aiding thy digestive faculty, O Brit- 
ish Reader, it leads to nothing, and there is no 
use in it ; but rather the reverse, for it costs 
thee somewhat. Nevertheless, if through this 
unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, and 



312 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

we by means of him, have led thee into the true 
Land of Dreams; and through the Clothes- 
Screen, as through a magical Pierre- Pertuis^ 
thou lookest, even for moments, into the region 
of the Wonderful, and seest and feelest that 
thy daily life is girt with Wonder, and based 
on Wonder, and thy very blankets and breeches 
are Miracles, — then art thou profited beyond 
money's worth; and hast a thankfulness 
toward our Professor; nay, perhaps in many 
a literary Tea-circle wilt open thy kind lips, 
and audibly express that same. 

Nay farther, art not thou too perhaps by this 
time made aware that all Symbols are pro- 
perly Clothes; that all Forms whereby Spirit 
manifests itself to sense, whether outwardly or 
in the imagination, are Clothes ; and thus not 
only the parchment Magna Charta, which a 
Tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the 
Pomp and Authority of Law, the sacredness of 
Majesty, and all inferior Worships(Worthships) 
are properly a Vesture and Raiment; and the 
Thirty-nine Articles themselves are articles of 
wearing-apparel (for the Religious Idea)? In 
which case must it not also h^ admitted that 
this Science of Clothes is a high one, and may 
with infinitely deeper study on thy part yield 
richer fruit: that it takes scientific rank beside 
Codification, and Political Economy, and the 
Theory of the British Constitution ; nay rather, 
from its prophetic height looks down on all 
these, as on so many weaving-shops and spin- 
ning-mills, where the Vestures which it has to 
fashion, and consecrate and distribute, are, too 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 313 

often by haggard hungry operatives who see 
no farther than their nose, mechanically woven 
and spun? 

But omitting all this, much more all that 
concerns Natural Supernaturalism, and indeed 
whatever has reference to the Ulterior or 
Transcendental portion of the Science, or bears 
never so remotely on that promised Volume of 
the Palingejiesie der menschliche?i Gesellschaft 
(Newbirth of Society), — we humbly suggest 
that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even 
the lowest, is without its direct value, but that 
innumerable inferences of a practical nature 
may be drawn therefrom. To say nothing of 
those pregnant considerations, ethical, polit- 
ical, symbolical, which crowd on the Clothes- 
Philosopher from the very threshold of his 
Science; nothing even of those "architectural 
ideas," which, as we have seen, lurk at the 
bottom of all Modes, and will one day, better 
unfolding themselves, lead to important revo- 
lutions, — let us glance for a moment, and with 
the faintest light of Clothes-Philosophy, on 
what may be called the Habilatory Class of our 
fellow-men. Here too overlooking, where so 
much were to be looked on, the million spin- 
ners, weavers, . fullers, dyers, washers, and 
wringers, that puddle and muddle in their dark 
recesses, to make us Clothes, and die that we 
may live, — let us but turn the reader's attention 
upon two small divisions of mankind, who, like 
moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, 
creatures that live, move and have their being 
in Cloth : we mean, Dandies and Tailors. 



314 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

In regard to both which small divisions it 
may be asserted without scruple, that the 
public feeling, unenlightened by Philosophy, 
is at fault; and even that the dictates of 
humanity are violated. As will perhaps 
abundantly appear to readers of the two fol- 
lowing Chapters. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 315 



CHAPTER X. 

THE DANDIACAL BODY. 

First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with 
some scientific strictness, what a Dandy spe- 
cially is. A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, 
a Man whose trade, office and existence con- 
sists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty 
of his soul, spirit, purse and person is hero- 
ically consecrated to this one object, the wear- 
ing of Clothes wisely and well: so that as 
others dress to live, he lives to dress. The 
all-importance of Clothes, which a German 
Professor, of unequaled learning and acumen, 
Vv^rites his enormous Volume to demonstrate, 
has sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy 
VvHthout effort, like an instinct of genius; he is 
inspired with Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What 
Teufelsdrockh would call a "Divine Idea of 
Cloth" is born with him; and this, like other 
such Ideas, will express itself outwardly, or 
wring his heart asunder with unutterable 
throes. 

But, like a generous, creative enthusiast, he 
fearlessly makes his Idea an Action; shows 
himself in peculiar guise to mankind; walks 
forth, a witness and living Martyr to the 
eternal worth of Clothes. We called him a 
Poet: is not his body the (stuffed) parchment- 



316 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

skin whereon he writes, with cunning Hud- 
dersfield dyes, a Sonnet to his mistress' eye- 
brow? Say, rather an Epos, and Cloiha 
Virumque cano, to the whole world, in Maca- 
ronic verses, which he that runs may read. 
Nay, if you grant, what seems to be admissi- 
ble, that the Dandy has a Thinking-principle 
in him, and some notions of Time and Space, 
is there not in this Life-devotedness to Cloth, 
in this so willing sacrifice of the Immortal to 
the Perishable, something (though in reverse 
order) of that blending and identification of 
Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen, 
constitutes the Trophetic character? 

And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, 
and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that 
the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may 
say, that you would recognize his existence; 
would admit him to be a living object; or 
even failing this, a visual object, or thing that 
will reflect rays of light. Your silver or your 
gold (beyond what the niggardly Law has 
already secured him) he solicits not; simply 
the glance of your eyes. Understand his my- 
stic significance, or altogether miss and misin- 
terpret it; do but look at him, and he is con- 
tented. May we not well cry shame on an 
ungrateful world, which refuses even this poor 
boon; which will waste its optic faculty on 
dried Crocodiles, and Siamese Twins; and 
over the domestic wonderful wonder of won- 
ders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty indiffer- 
ence, and a scarcely concealed contempt! Him 
no Zoologist classes among the Mammalia^ no 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 317 

Anatomist dissects with care : when did we see 
any injected Preparation of the Dandy in our 
Museums; any specimen of him preserved in 
spirits? Lord Herringbone may dress himself 
in a snuff-brown suit, with snuff-brown shirt 
and shoes; it skills not; the undiscerning 
public, occupied with grosser wants, passes 
by regardless on the other side. 

The age of Curiosity, like that of Chivalry, 
is indeed, properly speaking, gone. Yet pet- 
haps only gone to sleep : for here arises the 
Clothes- Philosophy to resuscitate, strangely 
enough both the one and the other! Should 
sound views of this Science come to prevail, 
the essential nature of the British Dandy, and 
the mystic significance that lies in him, cannot 
always remain hidden under laughable and 
lamentable hallucination. The following long 
Extract from Professor Teufelsdrockh may 
set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in 
the way toward such. It is to be regretted, 
however, that here, as so often elsewhere, the 
Professor's keen philosophic perspicacity is 
somewhat marred by a certain mixture of 
almost owlish purblindness, or else of some 
perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency; our 
readers shall judge which : 

"In these distracted times," writes he, 
"when the Religious Principle, driven out of 
most Churches, either lies unseen in the hearts 
of good men, looking and longing and silently 
working there toward some new Revelation ; 
or else wanders homeless over the world, like 
a disembodied soul seekinof its terrestrial or- 



318 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ganization, — into how many strange shapes, of 
Superstition and Fanaticism, does it not ten- 
tatively and errantly cast itself! The higher 
Enthusiasm of man's nature is for the while 
without Exponent; yet does it continue indes- 
tructible, unweariedly active, and work blindly 
in the great chaotic deep: thus Sect after Sect, 
and Church after Church, bodies itself forth, 
and melts again into new metamorphosis. 

"Chiefly is this observable in England, 
which, as the wealthiest and worst-instructed 
of European nations, offers precisely the ele- 
ments (of Heat, namely, and of Darkness), in 
which such moon-calves and monstrosities 
are best generated. Among the newer Sects 
of that country, one of the most notable, and 
closely connected with our present subject, is- 
that of the Dandies; concerning which, what 
little information I have been able to procure 
may fitly stand here. 

"It is true, certain of the English Journal- 
ists, men generally without sense for the Relig- 
ious Principle, or judgment for its manifesta- 
tions, speak, in their brief enigmatic notices, 
as if this were perhaps rather a Secular Sect, 
and not a Religious one; nevertheless, to the 
pyschologic eye its devotional and even sacri- 
ficial character plainly enough reveals itself. 
Whether it belongs to the class of Fetish-wor- 
ships, or of Hero-worships or Polytheisms, or 
to what other class, ma)'' in the present state of 
our intelligence remain undecided {schweben). 
A certain touch of Manicheism, not indeed in 
the Gnostic shape, is discernible enough : also 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 319 

(for human Error walks in a cycle, and reap- 
pears at intervals) a not-inconsiderable resem- 
blance to that superstition of the Athos Monks, 
who by fasting from all nourishment, and 
looking intently for a length of time in their 
own navels, came to discern therein the true 
Apocalypse of Nature and Heaven Unveiled. 
To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dan- 
diacal sect were but a new modification, 
adapted to the new time of that primeval 
Superstition, Self- worship ; which Zerdusht, 
Quangfoutchee, Mohamed, and others, strove 
rather to subordinate and restrain than to 
eradicate ; and which only in the purer forms 
of Religion has been altogether rejected. 
Wherefore, if any one chooses to name it re- 
vived Ahrimanism, or a new figure of Demon- 
Worship, I have, so far as is yet visible, no 
objection. 

''For the rest, these people, animated with 
the zeal of a new Sect, display courage and 
perseverance, and what force there is in man's 
nature, though never so enslaved. They 
affect great piirity and separatism; distin- 
guish themselves by a particular costume 
(whereof some notices were given in the 
earlier part of this Volume) ; likewise, so far 
as possible, by a particular speech (apparently 
some broken Lingua-franca.ox English-French) ; 
and, on the whole, strive to maintain a true 
Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves 
unspotted from the world. 

"They have their Temples, whereof the 
chief, as the Jewish Temple did, stands in 



320 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

their metropolis; and is named Almack's, a 
word of uncertain et5^mology. They worship 
principally by night; and have their High- 
priests and High-priestesses, who, however, do 
not continue for life. The rites, by some sup- 
posed to be of the Menadic sort, or perhaps 
with an Eleusinian or Cabiric character, are 
held strictly secret. Nor are Sacred Books 
wanting to the Sect; these they call Fashion- 
able Novels: however, the canon is not com- 
pleted, and some are canonical and others not. 
"Of such Sacred Books, I, not without ex- 
pense, procured myself some samples; and in 
hope of true insight, and with the zeal which 
beseems an Inquirer into Clothes, sent to 
interpret and study them. But wholly to no 
purpose: that tough faculty of reading, for 
which the world will not refuse me credit, was 
here for the first time foiled and set at naught. 
In vain that I summoned my whole energies 
{ruich weidlich anstrengte)^ and did my very 
utmost; at the end of some short space, I was 
uniformly seized with not so much what I can 
call a drumming in my ears, as a kind of in- 
finite, unsufferable Jew's-harp ing and scrannel 
piping there ; to which the frightfullest species 
of Magnetic Sleep soon supervened. And if I 
strove to shake this away, and absolutely would 
not yield, there came a hitherto unfelt sensa- 
tion, as of Delirium Tremens, and a melting 
into total deliqium : till at last, by order of the 
Doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intel- 
lectual and bodily faculties, and a general 
breaking-up of the constitution, I reluctantly 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 321 

but determinedly forbore. Was there some 
miracle at work here ; like those Fire-balls, 
and supernal and infernal prodigies, which, in 
the case of the Jewish Mysteries, have also 
more than once scared-back the Alien? Be 
this as it may, such failure on my part, after 
best efforts, must excuse the imperfection of 
this sketch; altogether incomplete, yet the 
completest I could give of a Sect too singular 
to be omitted. 

"Loving my own life and senses as I do, 
no power shall induce me, as a private indi- 
vidual, to open another Fashionable Novel. 
But luckily, in this dilemma, comes a hand 
from the clouds ; wherelDy if not victory, deliv- 
erance is held out to me. Round one of these 
Book-packages, which the Stillschweigeii sche 
Buchhandlu7ig is in the habit of importing 
from England, come, as is usual, various waste 
printed-sheets {^MaculaUtr -blatter), by way of 
interior wrappage: into these the Clothes- 
Philosopher, with a certain Mohamedan rever- 
ence even for waste-paper, where curious 
knowledge will som.etimes hover, disdains not 
to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his 
astonishment when on such a defaced stray- 
sheet, probably the outcast fraction of some 
English Periodical, such as they name Maga- 
zine, appears something like a Dissertation 
on this very subject of Fashionable Novels! 
It sets out, indeed, chiefly from a Secular 
point of view; directing itself, not without 
asperity, against some to me unknown indi- 
vual named Pelham, who seems to be a Myst- 

21 Sartor Reeartus 



322 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

agogue, and leading Teacher and Preacher of 
the Sect; so that, what indeed otherwise was 
not to be expected in such a fugitive fragmen- 
tary sheet, the true secret, the Religious physi- 
ognomy and physiology of the Dandiacal Body, 
is nowise laid fully open there. Nevertheless, 
scattered lights do from time to time sparkle 
out, whereby I have endeavored to profit. 
Nay, in one passage selected from the Proph- 
ecies, or Mythic Theogenies, or whatever 
they are (for the style seems very mixed) of 
this Mystagogue, I find what appears to be a 
Confession of Faith, or Whole Duty of Man, 
according to the tenets of that Sect. Which 
Confession or Whole Duty, therefore, as pro- 
ceeding from a source so authentic, I shall here 
arrange under Seven distinct Articles, and in 
very abridged shape lay before the German 
world ; therewith taking leave of this matter. 
Observe also, that to avoid possibility of error, 
I, as far as may be, quote literally from the 
Original : 



' I. Coats should have nothing of the triangle 
about them; at the same time, wrinkles be- 
hind should be carefully avoided. 

'2. The collar is a very important point: it 
should be low behind, and slightly rolled. 

'3. No license of fashion can allow a man of 
delicate taste to adopt the posterial luxuriance 
of a Hottentot. 

*4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 323 

'5. The good sense of a gentleman is no- 
where more finely developed than in his rings. 

'6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain 
restrictions, to wear white waistcoats. 

'7. The trousers must be exceedingly tight 
across the hips. ' 

"All which Propositions I, for the present, 
content myself with modestly but peremptorily 
and irrevocably denying. 

"In strange contrast with this Dandiacal 
Body stands another British Sect, originally, 
as I understand, of Ireland, where its chief 
seat still is : but known also in the main Island, 
and, indeed, everywhere rapidly spreading. 
As this Sect has hitherto emitted no Canonical 
Books, it remains to me in the same state of 
obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has pub- 
lished Books that the unassisted human facul- 
ties are inadequate to read. The members 
appear to be designated by a considerable 
diversity of names, according to their various 
places of establishment: in England they are 
generally called the Drudge Sect ; also, un- 
philosophically enough, the White Negroes; 
and, chiefly in scorn by those of other com- 
munions the Ragged-Beggar Sect. In Scot- 
land, again, I find them entitled Hallanshak- 
ers, or the Stook of Duds Sect; any individual 
communicant is named Stook of Duds (that is. 
Shocks of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to 
their professional Costume. While in Ireland, 
which, as mentioned, is their grand parent 
hive, they go by a perplexing multiplicity of 
designations, such as Bogtrotters, Red-shanks, 



324 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Ribbonmen, Cottiers, Peep-of-Day Boys, Babes 
of the Wood, Rockites, Poor Slaves: which 
last, however, seems to be the primary and 
generic name; whereto, probably enough, the 
others are only subsidiary species, or slight 
varieties; or, at most, propagated offsets from 
the parent stem, whose minute subdivisions, 
and shades of difference, it were here loss of 
time to dwell on. Enough for us to under- 
stand, what seems indubitable, that the orig- 
inal Sect is that of the Poor Slaves ; whose doc- 
trines, practices, and fundamental characteris- 
tics pervade and animate the whole Body, 
howsoever denominated or outwardly diversi- 
fied. 

"The precise speculative tenets of this 
Brotherhood: how the Universe, and Man, 
and Man's Life, picture themselves to the mind 
of an Irish Poor-Slave ; with what feelings and 
opinions he looks forward on the Future, 
round on the Present, back on the Past, it were 
extremely difficult to specify. Something mon- 
astic there appears to be in their Constitution; 
we find them bound by the two Monastic Vows, 
of Poverty and Obedience ; which Vows, espe- 
cially the former, it is said, they observe with 
great strictness; nay, as I have understood it, 
they are pledged, and be it by any solemn 
Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably con- 
secrated thereto, even before birth. That the 
third Monastic Vow, of Chastity, is rigidly en- 
forced among them, I find no ground to con- 
jecture. 

"Furthermore, they appear to imitate the 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 325 

Dandiacal Sect in their grand principle of 
wearing a peculiar Costume. Of which Irish 
Poor-Slave Costume no description will indeed 
be found in the present Volume ; for this rea- 
son, that by the imperfect organ of Language 
it did not seem describable. Their raiment 
consists of innumerable skirts, lappets and 
irregular wings of all cloths and of all colors ; 
through the labyrinthic intricacies of which 
their bodies are introduced by some unknown 
process. It is fastened together by a multiplex 
combination of buttons, thrums and skewers; 
to which frequently is added a girdle of leath- 
er, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the 
loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem par- 
tial, and often wear it by way of sandals. In 
head-dress they affect a certain freedom ; hats 
with partial brim, without crown, or with only 
a loose, hinged, or valved crown ; in the for- 
mer case, they sometimes invert the hat, and 
wear it brim uppermost, like a University-cap, 
with what view is unknown. 

"The name Poor-Slaves seems to indicate a 
Slavonic, Polish, or Russian origin: not so, 
however, the interior essence and spirit of 
their Superstition, which rather displays a 
Teutonic or Druidical character. One might 
fancy them worshipers of Hertha, or the 
earth; for they dig and affectionately work 
continually in her bosom ; or else, shut-up in 
private Oratories, meditate and manipulate the 
substances derived from her; seldom looking 
up toward the Heavenly Luminaries, and 
then with comparative indift'erence. Like the 



326 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Druids, on the other hand, they live in dark 
dwellings, often even breaking their glass-win- 
dows, where they find such, and stuffing them 
up with pieces of raiment, or other opaque 
substances, till the fit obscurity is restored. 
Again, like all followers of Nature-Worship, 
they are liable to outbreakings of an enthusi- 
asm rising to ferocity ; and burn men, if not in 
wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. 

"m respect of diet, they have also their 
observances. All Poor- Slaves are Rhizophag- 
ous (or Root-eaters) ; a few are Ichthyophag- 
ous, and use Salted Herrings; other animal 
food they abstain from ; except, indeed, with 
perhaps some strange inverted fragment of a 
Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a 
natural death. Their universal sustenance is 
the root named Potato, cooked by fire alone ; 
and generaly without condiment or relish of 
any kind, save an unknown condiment named 
Point, into the meaning of which I have vainly 
inquired; the victual Potatoes- and-Point not 
appearing, at least not with specific accuracy 
of description, in any European Cookery- Book 
whatever. For drink, they use, with an 
almost epigrammatic counterpoise of taste, 
Milk, which is the mildest of liquors, and Pot- 
heen, which is the fiercest. This latter I have 
tasted as well as the English Blue- Ruin, and 
the Scotch Whisky, analogous fluids used by 
the Sect in those countries ; it evidently con- 
tains some form of alcohol, in the highest state 
of concentration, though disguised with acried 
oils; and is, on the whole, the most pungent 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 327 

substance known to me, — indeed, a perfect 
liquid fire. In all their Religious Solemnities, 
Potheen is said to be an indispensable requis- 
ite, and largely consumed. 

"An Irish Traveler, of perhaps common 
veracity, who presents himself under the to 
me unmeaning title of The Late John Bernard, 
offers the following sketch of a domestic estab- 
lishment, the inmates whereof, though such is 
not stated expressly, appear to have been of 
that Faith. Thereby shall my German read- 
ers now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were 
with their own eyes ; and even see him at meat. 
Moreover, in the so precious waste-paper sheet 
above mentioned, I have found some corres- 
ponding picture of a Dandiacal Household, 
painted by that same Dandiacal Mystagogue 
or Theogonist ; this also, by way of counter- 
part and contrast, the world shall look into. 

"First, therefore, of the Poor- Slave, who 
appears likewise to have been a species of Inn- 
keeper. I quote from the original : 

Poor-Slave Household. 

" 'The furniture of this Caravansera con- 
sisted of a large iron Pot, two oaken Tables, 
two Benches, two Chairs, and a Potheen Nog- 
gin. There was a Loft above (attainable by a 
ladder), upon which the inmates slept; and 
the space below was divided by a hurdle into 
two Apartments; the one for their cow and 
pig, the other for themselves and guests. On 
entering the house we discovered the family, 



328 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

eleven in number, at dinner; the father sit- 
ting at the top, the mother at the bottom, the 
children on each side, of a large oaken Board, 
which was scooped-out in the middle like a 
trough, to receive the contents of their Pot of 
Potatoes. Little holes were cut at equal dis- 
tances to contain Salt; and a bowl of Milk 
stood on the table ; all the luxuries of meat 
and beer, bread, knives and dishes were dis- 
pensed with.' The Poor-Slave himself our 
Traveler found, as he says, broad-backed, 
black-browed, of great personal strength, and 
mouth from ear to ear. His Wife was a sun- 
browned but well-featured woman; and his 
young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite 
of ravens. Of their Philosophical or Relig- 
ious tenets or observances, no notice or hint. 

"But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal House- 
hold, in which, truly, that often-mentioned 
Mystagogue and inspired Penman himself has 
his abode : 

Dandiacal Household. 

'* *A Dressing-room splendily furnished; vio- 
let-colored curtains, chairs and ottomans of the 
same hue. Two full-length Mirrors are placed, 
one on each side of a table, which supports 
the luxuries of the Toilet. Several Bottles of 
Perfumes, arranged in a peculiar fashion, 
stand upon a smaller table of mother-of-pearl : 
opposite to these are placed the appurtenances 
of Lavation richly wrought in frosted silver. 
A Wardrobe of Buhl is on the left : the doors 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 329 

of which, being partly open, discover a profu- 
sion of Clothes; Shoes of a singularly small 
size monopolize the lower shelves. Fronting 
the wardrobe a door ajar gives some slight 
glimpse of a Bathroom. Folding-doors in the 
background. — Enter the Author,' our Theogo- 
nist in person, 'obsequiously preceded by a 
French Valet, in white silk Jacket and cam- 
bric Apron. ' 

"Such are the two Sects which at this mo- 
ment divide the more unsettled portion of 
British People; and agitate that ever-vexed 
country. To the eye of the political Seer, 
their mutual relation, pregnant with the ele- 
ments of discord and hostility, is far from con- 
soling. These two principles of Dandiacal 
Self-Worship, or Demon- Worship and Poor- 
Slavish or Drudgical Earth-worship or what- 
ever that name Drudgism may be, do as yet, 
indeed, manifest themselves under distant and 
nov/ise considerable shapes; nevertheless, in 
their roots and subterranean ramifications, 
they extend through the entire structure of 
Society, and work unweariedly in the secret 
depths of English national Existence; striv- 
ing to separate and isolate it into two contra- 
dictory, uncommunicating masses. 

"In numbers, and even individual strength, 
the Poor-Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, 
are hourly increasing. The Dandiacal, again, 
is by nature no proselytizing Sect; but it boasts 
of great hereditary resources, and is strong by 
union; whereas the Drudges, split into par- 

22 Sartor Resartus 



S30 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ties, have as yet no rallying-point ; or, at best, 
only co-operate by means of partial secret affil- 
iations. If, indeed, there were to arise a Com- 
munion of Drudges, as there is already a Com- 
munion of Saints, what strangest effects would 
follow therefrom ! Dandyism as yet affects to 
look down on Drudgism ; but perhaps the houT 
of trial, when it will be practically seen which 
ought to look down, and which up, is not so 
distant. 

**To me it seems probable that the two Sects 
will one day part England between them ; each 
recruiting itself from the intermediate ranks, 
till there be none left to enlist on either side. 
Those Dandiacal Manicheans, with the host of 
Dandyizing Christians, will form one body: 
the Drudges, gathering round them whosoever 
is Drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel Pagan ; 
sweeping-up likewise all manner of Utilitari- 
ans, Radicals, refractory Potwallopers, and so 
forth, into their general mass, will form 
another. I could liken Dandyism and Drudg- 
ism to two bottomless boiling Whirlpools that 
had broken out on opposite quarters of the firm 
land : as yet they appear only disquieted, fool- 
ishly bubbling wells, which man's art might 
cover in ; yet mark them, their diameter is 
daily widening: they are hollow Cones that 
boil up from the infinite Deep, over which 
your firm land is but a thin crust or rind! 
Thus daily is the intermediate land crumbling 
in, daily the empire of the two Buchan-BuUers 
extending; till now there is but a foot-plank, 
a mere film of Land betw^een them; this, too, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 331 

is washed away: and then — we have the true 
Hell of Waters, and Noah's Deluge is outdel- 
uged! 

"Or better, I might call them two boundless, 
and, indeed, unexampled Electric Machines 
(turned b}^ the 'Machinery of Society'), with 
batteries of opposite quality; Drudgism the 
Negative, Dandyism the Positive : one attracts 
hourly toward it and appropriates all the Pos- 
itive Electricity of the nation (namely, the 
Money thereof) ; the other is equally busy with 
the Negative (that is to say, the Hunger), 
which is equally potent. Hitherto you see only 
partial transient sparkles and sputters: but 
wait a little, till the entire nation is in an elec- 
tric state : till your whole vital Electricity, no 
longer healthfully Neutral, is cut into two iso- 
lated portions of Positive and Negative (of 
Money and of Hunger) ; and stands there bot- 
tled-up in two World-batteries! The stirring 
of a child's finger brings the two together; and 
then — What then? The Earth is but shivered 
into impalpable smoke by that Doom's-thun- 
derpeal; the Sun misses one of his Planets in 
Space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of 
the Moon.— Or better still, I might liken." 

O, enough, enough of likenings and simili- 
tudes ; in excess of which, truly, it is hard to 
say whether Teufelsdrockh or ourselves sin the 
more. 

We have often blamed him for a habit of 
wire-drawing and over-refining; from of old 
we have been familiar with his tendency to 
Mysticism and Religiosity, whereby in every- 



332 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

thing he was still scenting- out Religion; but 
never perhaps did these amaurosis-suffusions 
so cloud and distort his otherwise most pierc- 
ing vision, as in this of the Dandiacal Body! 
Or was there something of intended satire ; is 
the Professor and Seer not quite the blinkard 
he affects to be? Of an ordinary mortal we 
should have decisively answered in the affirm- 
ative ; but with a Teufelsdrockh there ever 
hovers some shade of doubt. In the mean- 
while, if satire were actually intended, the case 
is little better. There are not wanting men, 
who will answer: Does your Professor take us 
for simpletons? His irony has overshot itself: 
we see through it, and perhaps through him. 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 333 



CHAPTER XL 

TAILORS. 

Thus, however, has our first Practical Infer- 
ence from the Clothes-Philosophy, that which 
respects Dandies, been sufficiently drawn and 
we come now to the second, concerning 
Tailors. On this latter our opinion happily 
quite coincides with that of Teufelsdrockh him- 
self, as expressed in the concluding page of this 
Volume, to whom, therefore, we willingly 
give place. Let him speak his last words, in 
his own way : 

"Upward of a century," says he, "must 
elapse, and still the bleeding fight of Freedom 
be fought, whoso is noblest perishing in the 
van, and thrones be hurled on altars like Pelion 
on Ossa, and the Moloch of Iniquity have his 
victims, and the Michael of Justice his mar- 
tyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to their 
tre^' prerogatives of manhood, and this last 
wound of suffering Humanity be closed. 

"If aught in the history of the world's blind- 
ness could surprise us, here might we indeed 
pause and wonder. An idea has gone abroad, 
and fixed itself down into a wide-spreading 
rooted error, that Tailors are a distinct species 
in Physiology, not Men, but fractional Parts of 
a Man. Call any one a ScJmeider (Cutter, Tailor), 



334 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

is it not, in our dislocated, hoodwinked, and 
indeed delirious condition of Society, equiva- 
lent to defying his perpetual fellest enmity? 
The epithet schneider-massig (tailor-like) be- 
tokens an otherwise unapproachable degree of 
pusillanimity: we introduce a Tailor's Melan- 
choly, more opprobrious than any Leprosy, into 
our Books of Medicine ; and fable I know not 
what of his generating it by living on Cab- 
bage. Why should I speak of Hans Sachs 
(himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather- 
Tailor), with his ScJmeider ?mt dent Panier? 
Why of Shakespeare, in his Taming of the 
Shrew, and elsewhere? Does it not stand on 
record that the English Queen Elizabeth, re- 
ceiving a deputation of Eighteen Tailors, ad- 
dressed them with 'Good-morning, gentlemen 
both!' Did not the same virago boast that she 
had a Cavalry Regiment, v/hereof neither horse 
nor man could be injured; her Regiment, 
namely, of Tailors on Mares? Thus every 
where is the falsehood taken for granted, and 
acted on as an indisputable fact. 

"Nevertheless, need I put the question to 
any Physiologist, whether it is disputable or 
not? Seems it not at least presumable, that, 
under his Clothes, the Tailor has bones and 
viscera, and other muscles than the sartorious? 
W^hich function of manhood is the Tailor not 
conjectured to perform? / Can he not arrest 
for debt? Is he not in most countries a tax- 
paying animal? 

"To no reader of this Volume can it be 
doubtful which conviction is mine. Nay if the 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 335 

fruit of these long vigils, and almost preter- 
natural Inquiries, is not to perish utterly, the 
world will have approximated toward a higher 
Truth ; and the doctrine, which Swift, with 
the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, 
will stand revealed in clear light: that the 
Tailor is not only a Man, but something of a 
Creator or Divinity. Of Franklin it was said, 
that 'he snatched the Thunder from Heaven 
and the Scepter from Kings:' but which is 
greater, I would ask, he that lends, or he that 
snatches? For, looking away from individual 
cases, and how a Man is by the Tailor new- 
created into a Nobleman, and clothed not only 
with Wool but with Dignity and a Mystic 
Dominion, — is not the fair fabric of Society 
itself, with all its royal mantles and pontifical 
stoles, whereby, from its nakedness and dis- 
memberment, we are organized into Polities, 
into nations, and a whole co-operating Man- 
kind, the creation, as has here been often irre- 
fragably evinced, of the Tailor alone? — What 
too are all Poets and moral Teachers, but a 
species of Metaphorical Tailors? Touching 
which high Guild the greatest living Guild- 
brother has triumphantly asked us: 'Nay if 
thou wilt have it, who but the Poet first made 
Gods for men; brought them down to us: and 
raised us up to them?' 

"And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on 
the hard basis of his Shopboard, the world 
treats with contumely, as the ninth part of a 
man! Look up, thou much-injured one, look 
up with the kindling eye of hope, and prophetic 



336 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

bodings of a noble better time. Too long hast 
thou sat there, on crossed legs, wearing thy 
ankle-joints to horn ; like some sacred Anchor- 
ite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing 
down Heaven's richest blessings, for a world 
that scoffed at thee. Be of hope! Already 
streaks of blue peer through our clouds; the 
thick gloom of Ignorance is rolling asunder, 
and it will be Day. Mankind will repay with 
interest their long-accumulated debt: the 
Anchorite that was scoffed at will be wor- 
shiped; the Fraction will become not an 
Integer only, but a Square and Cube. With 
astonishment the world will recognize that the 
Tailor is its Hierophant and Hierarch, or even 
its God. 

"As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, 
and looked upon these Four-and-Twenty Tail- 
ors, sewing and embroidering that rich Cloth, 
which the Sultan sends yearly for the Caaba 
of Mecca, I thought within myself: How many 
other Unholies has your covering Art made 
holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone ! 

"Still more touching was it when, turning 
the corner of a lane, in the Scottish Town of 
Edinburgh, I came upon a Signpost, whereon 
stood written that such and such a one was 
'Breeches-Maker to his Majesty;' and stood 
painted the Effigies of a Pair of Leather 
Breeches, and between the knees these memor- 
able words. Sic itur ad astra. Was not this the 
martyr prison-speech of a Tailor sighing indeed 
in bonds, yet sighing toward deliverance, and 
prophetically appealing to a better day? A 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 337 

day of justice, when the worth of Breeches 
would be revealed to man, and the Scissors be- 
come forever venerable. 

"Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his 
appeal been altogether in vain. It was in this 
high moment, when the soul, rent, as it were, 
and shred asunder, is open to inspiring influ- 
ence, that I first conceived this Work on 
Clothes: the greatest I can ever hope to do; 
which has already after long retardations, 
occupied, and will yet occupy, so large a sec- 
tion of my Life ; and of which the Primary and 
simpler Portion may here find its conclusion." 



338 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

FAREWELL. 

So have we endeavored, from the enormous, 
amorphous Plum-pudding, more like a Scot- 
tish Haggis, which Herr Teufelsdrockh had 
kneaded for his fellow mortals, to pick out the 
choicest Plums, and present them separately 
on a cover of our own. A laborious, per- 
haps a thankless enterprise; in which, how- 
ever, something of hope has occasionally 
cheered us, and of which we can now wash 
our hands not altogether without satisfac- 
tion. If hereby, though in barbaric wise, some 
morsel of spiritual nourishment have been 
added to the scanty ration of our beloved Brit- 
ish world, what nobler recompense could the 
Editor desire? If it prove otherwise, why 
should he murmur? Was not this a Task 
which Destiny, in any case, had appointed him ; 
which having now done with, he sees his gen- 
eral Day's-work so mtich the lighter, so much 
the shorter? 

Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impos- 
sible to take leave without a mingled feeling 
of astonishment, gratitude and disapproval. 
Who will not regret that talents, which might 
have profited in the higher walks of Philoso- 
phy, or in Art itself, have been so much de- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 339 

voted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms; 
nay, too often to a scraping in kennels, where 
lost rings and diamond-necklaces are nowise 
the sole conquests? Regret is unavoidable; 
yet censure were loss of time. To cure him 
of his mad humors British Criticism would 
essay in vain : enough for her if she can, b}^ 
vigilance, prevent the spreading of such 
among ourselves. What a result, should this 
piebald, entangled, hyper-metaphorical style 
of writing, not to say of thinking, become 
general among our Literary men ! As it might 
so easily do. Thus has not the Editor him- 
self, working over Teufelsdrockh's German, 
lost much of his own English purity? Even 
as the smaller whirlpool is sucked into the lar- 
ger, and made to whirl along with it, so has 
the lesser mind, in this instance, been forced 
to become portion of the greater, and, like it, 
see all things figuratively: which habit, time 
and assiduous effort will be needed to eradi- 
cate. 

Never thless, wayward as our Professor 
shows himself, is there any reader that can 
part with him in declared enmity? Let us 
confess, there is that in the wild, much-suffer- 
ing, much-inflicting man, which almost 
attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and 
believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, 
Begone; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst 
not be; and to Truth, Be thou in place of all 
to me: a man who had manfully defied the 
"Time-prince," or Devil, to his face; nay per- 
haps, Hannibal-like, was mysteriously conse- 



340 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

crated from birth to that warfare, and now 
stood minded to wage the same, by all 
weapons, in all places, at all times. In such a 
cause, any soldier, were he but a Polack 
Scythe-man, shall be welcome. 

Still the question returns on us: How could 
a man occasionally of keen insight, not with- 
out keen sense of propriety, who had real 
Thoughts to communicate, resolve to emit 
them in a shape bordering so closely on the 
absurd? Which question he were wiser than 
the present Editor who should satisfactorily 
answer. Our conjecture has sometimes been, 
that perhaps Necessity as well as Choice was 
concerned in it. Seems it not conceivable that, 
in a Life like our Professor's, where so much 
bountifully given by Nature had in Practice 
failed and misgone. Literature also would 
never rightly prosper: that striving with his 
characteristic vehemence to paint this and the 
other Picture, and ever without success, he at 
last desperately dashes his sponge, full of all 
colors, against the canvas, to try whether it 
will paint Foam? With all his stillness, there 
were perhaps in Teufelsdrockh's desperation 
enough for this. 

A second conjecture we hazard with even 
less warranty. It is, that Teufelsdrockh is 
not without some touch of the universal feel- 
ing, a wish to proselytize, Hov/ often already 
have we paused, uncertain whether the basis 
of this so enigmatic nature were really vStoic- 
ism and Despair, or Love and Hope only 
seared into the figure of these! Remarkable, 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 341 

moreover, is this saying of his: "How were 
Friendship possible? In mutual devotedness 
to the Good and True : otherwise impossible ; 
except as Armed Neutrality, or hollow Com- 
mercial League. A man, be the Heavens 
ever praised, is sufficient for himself; yet were 
ten men, united in Love, capable of being and 
doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. 
Infinite is the help man can yield to man. *' 
And now in conjunction therewith consider 
this other: "It is the Night of the World, and 
still long till it be Day: we wander amid the 
glimmer of smoking ruins, and the Sun and 
the Stars of Heaven are as if blotted out for 
a season ; and two immeasurable Phantoms, 
Hypocrisy and Atheism, with the Gowl, Sen- 
suality, stalk abroad over the Earth, and call 
it theirs: well at ease are the Sleepers for 
whom Existence is a shallow Dream." 

But what of the awestruck Wakeful who find 
it a Reality? Should not these unite; since 
even an authentic Specter is not visible to 
Two? — In which case were this enormous 
Clothes-Volume properly an enormous Pitch- 
pan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his lone 
watchtower had kindled, that it might flame 
far and wide through the Night, and many a 
disconsolately wandering spirit be guided 
thither to a Brother's bosom! — We say as 
before, with all his malign Indifference, who 
knows what mad Hopes this man may harbor? 

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated 
here, which harmonizes ill with such conject- 
ure; and, indeed, were Teufelsdrockh made 



342 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

like other men, might as good as altogether 
subvert it. Namely, that 'while the Beacon- 
fire blazed its brightest, the Watchman had 
quitted it ; that no pilgrim could now ask him : 
Watchman, what of the Night? Professor 
Teufelsdrockh, be it known, is no longer vis- 
ibly present as Weissnichtwo, but again to all 
appearance host in space! Some time ago, 
the Hofrath Heuschreche was pleased to favor 
us with another copious Epistle; w^herein 
much is said about the "Population- Institute;" 
much repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Doc- 
uments, the hieroglyphic nature of which our 
Hofrath still seems not to have surmised; and, 
lastly, the strangest occurrence communicated, 
to us for the first time, in the following par- 
agraph : 

'^ Ew. Wohlgeboren will have seen from the 
public Prints, with what affectionate and hither- 
to fruitless solicitude Weissnichtwo regards 
the disappearance of her Sage. Might but the 
united voice of Germany prevail on him to 
return ; nay, could we but so much as eluci- 
date for ourselves by what mystery he went 
away! But, alas, old Lieschen experiences 
or affects the profoundest deafness, the pro- 
foundest ignorance : in the Wahngasse all lies 
swept, silent, sealed up; the Privy Council 
itself can hitherto elicit no answer. 

"It had been remarked that while the agitat- 
ing news of those Parisian Three Days flew 
from mouth to mouth, and dinned every ear 
in Weissnichtwo, Herr Teufelsdrockh was not 
known, at the Ga?is or elsewhere, to have 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 343 

spoken, for a whole week, any syllable except 
once these three : Es gcht a?i (It is begin- 
ning). Shortly after, as Ew, Wohlgebore?i 
knows, was the public tranquillity here, as in 
Berlin, threatened by a Sedition of the Tailors. 
Nor did there want Evil-wishers, or perhaps 
mere desperate Alarmists, who asserted that 
the closing Chapter of the Clothes- Volume was 
to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity 
of our Philosopher was indescribable: nay, 
perhaps through one humble individual, some- 
thing thereof might pass into the Rath (Coun- 
cil) itself, and so contribute to the country's 
deliverance. The Tailors are now entirely 
pacificated. — 

"To neither of these two incidents can I 
attribute our loss: yet still comes there the 
shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its Poli- 
tics. For example, when the Saint-Simonian 
Society transmitted its Propositions hither, 
and the whole Ga?is was one vast cackle of 
laughter, lamentation and astonishment, our 
Sage sat mute; and at the end of the third 
evening said merely: 'Here also are men who 
have discovered, not without amazement, that 
Man is still Man; of which high, long-for- 
gotten Truth you already see them make a 
false application,' Since then, as has been 
ascertained by examination of the Post-Direc- 
tor, there passed at least one Letter with its 
Answer between the Messieurs Bazard-Enfan- 
tin and our Professor himself; of what tenor 
can now only be conjectured. On the fifth 
night following, he was seen for the last time ! 



344 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

"Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to 
most of the hostile Sects that convulse our 
Era, been spirited away by certain of their 
emissaries; or did he go forth voluntarily to 
their headquarters to confer with them and con- 
front them? Reason we have, at least of a 
negative sort, to believe the Lost still living; 
our widowed heart also whispers that ere long 
he will himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, 
his archives must, one day, be opened by 
Authority; where much, perhaps the Palin- 
genesie itself, is thought to be reposited." 

Thus far the Hofrath; who vanishes, as is 
his wont, too like an Ignis Fatuus, leaving the 
dark still darker. 

So that Teufelsdrockh's public History were 
not done, then, or reduced to an even, unro- 
mantic tenor: nay, perhaps the better part 
thereof were only beginning? We stand in a 
region of conjectures, where substance has 
melted into shadow, and one cannot be distin- 
guished from the other. May time, which 
solves or suppresses all problems, throw glad 
light on this also! Our own private conject- 
ure, now amounting almost to certainty, is 
that, safe-moored in some stillest obscurity, 
not to lie always still, Teufelsdrockh is actually 
in London! 

Here, however, can the present Editor, with 
an ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling 
into sleep, lay down his pen. Well does he 
know, if human testimony be worth aught, 
that to innumerable British readers likewise, 
this is a satisfying consummation; that inuu- 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 345 

merable British readers consider him, during 
these current months, but as an uneasy inter- 
ruption to their ways of thought and digestion; 
and indicate so much, not without a certain 
irritancy and even spoken invective. For 
which, as for other mercies, ought not he to 
thank the Upper Powers? To one and all of 
you, O irritated readers, he, with out-stretched 
arms and open heart, will wave a kind fare- 
well. Thou too, miraculous Entity, who 
namest thyself Yorke and Oliver, and with 
thy vivacities and genialities, with thy all too 
Irish mirth and madness, and odor of pallid 
punch, makest such strange work, farewell; 
long as thou canst fare- well! Have we not, 
in the course of Eternity, traveled some 
months of our Life-Journey in partial sight of 
one another; have we not existed together, 
though in a state of quarrel? 

THE END. 



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Through the Looking Glass 

Carroll 

Treasure Island Stevenson 

Twice Told Tales. .Hawthorne 

Uncle Tom's Cabin Stowe 

Vicar of Wakefield. .Goldsmith 

Whittier's Poems Whittier 

Wide, Wide World . . . .Warner 

Window in Thrums Barrie 

Wonder Book Hawthorn© 



W. B. Donkey GomPflHrs Publightions 

COMPLETE LIST OF THE POETIC AND PROSE 

WORKS OF 

Ella Wheeler Wilcox 



POEMS OF PASSION. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. Presentation 
Edition— white vellum, gold top, $1.50. Presentation 
Edition — half calf, gold top. $2.50. 

POEMS OF PASSION. Quarto, cloth. Illustrated 
Edition. $1.50. 

POEMS OF PASSION. Pocket Edition, Illustrated— 16mo. 

cloth, 75 cents; full morocco, gold edges, $2.50. 

Human nature is less of a mystery after the reading of this book. 

"Only a woman of genius could produce such a remarkable 
v;roTk^.^'— Illustrated London Neivs. 

MAURINE AND OTHER POEMS. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. 
Presentation Edition— white vellum, gold top, $1.50. 
Presentation Edition — half calf, gold top, $2.50. 
Beautiful thoughts and healthy inspiration in every line. 
"Maurine is an ideal poem about a perfect woman."— T/ieSoitf/i. 

POEMS OF PLEASURE. 12mo, cloth, $1.00. Presenta- 
tion Edition — white vellum, gold top, $1.50. Presenta- 
tion Edition — half calf, gold top, $2.50o 
These poems make life doubly sweet and cheerful. 
"Mrs. Wilcox is an artist with a touch that reminds one of 

Lord Byron's impassionate strains."— Paris Register. 

THREE WOMEN. 12mo. cloth, $1.00. Presentation 
Edition— art binding, gold top. boxed. $1.50. 

Her latest and greatest poem. This marvelous narrative of 
thrilling interest depicts the lives of three good and beautiful 
women in every phase of weakness, passion, pride, love, sympathy 
and tenderness. 

AN AMBITIOUS MAN. (Prose.) 12mo. cloth, Si. 00. 

"Vivid realism stands forth from every page of this fascinating 
book."— i'ver^ Day. 



WORKS Of ELLi WHEELER WILCOX (Continued) 

HOW SALVATOR WON AND OTHER POEMS. 12mo. 
cloth, $1.00. Presentation Edition — white vellum, gold 
top, $1 50. Presentation Edition — half calf, gold top, 
$2.50. 

A choice collection of recitations, specially compiled for read- 
ers and impersonators. 

"Her name is a household word. Her great power lies in depict- 
ing human emotions ; and in handling that grandest of all passions 
-:-love— she wields the pen of a master."— T/ie Saturday Record. 

CUSTER AND OTHER POEMS. Handsomely illustrated. 

12mo, cloth, $1.00. Presentation Edition — white vellum, 

gold top, $1.50. Presentation Edition— half calf, gold 

top, $2.50. 

A grand epic of the exploits and massacre of the immortal 
Custer. 

"One cannot help gaining new impetus for the spiritual exist- 
ence from coming in contact, mentally, with such ideal sentiments 
and emotions as this rarely gifted poetess voices in magnificent 
verse.'" —Universal Trpth. 

AN ERRING WOMAN'S LOVE. 12mo, cloth. $1.00. 
Presentation Edition — white vellum, gold top, $1.50. 
Presentation Edition — half calf, gold top, $2.50. 

"Power and pathos characterize this magnificent poem. A 
deep understanding of life and an intense sympathy are beauti- 
fully expressed."— Trifeime. 

MEN, WOMEN AND EMOTIONS. (Prose.) 12mo, heavy 
enameled paper cover, 50 cents ; English cloth, $1.00, 
A skillful analysis of social habits, customs and follies. 
"Her fame has reached all parts of the world, and her popular- 
ity seems to grow with each succeeding year." — American Newsman. 

THE BEAUTIFUL LAND OF NOD. (Poems, songs and 

stories.) With over sixty original illustrations. Quarto, 

cloth, $1.00. 

The delight of the nursery. A charming mother's book. 

"The foremost babys book of the world."— iVety Orleans 
Picayune. 

PRESENTATION SETS. Poems of Passion, Maurine, 
Poems of Pleasure, How Salvator Won, and Custer, are 
supplied in sets of 3, 4, or 5 titles, as may be desired, in 
neat boxes, without extra charge. 

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX'S WORKS are for sale by leading book- 
sellers everywhere, or will be sent postpaid on receipt of price by 
the Publishers. 

W. B. CONKBY COMPA^Y, Chicago 



W. B. DONKEY COMPANY'S PUBLICATIONS 



1. kbh6 Constantin Hal^vy 

2. Adventures of a Brownie. ..Mulock 

3. All Aboard Optic 

4. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland 

..Carroll 

5. An Attic Philosopher in Paris 

Souvestre 

6. Autobiography of Benjamin 

Franklin , 

7. Autocrat of tho Breakfast Table 

, Holmes 

11. Bacon's Essays. Bacon 

12. Barrack Room Balla'is. . .Kipling 

13. Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush 

Maclaren 

14. Black Beauty Scwall 

15. Blithcdale Romance. .Hawthorne 

16. Boat Club Cptic 

17. Bracebridge Hal 1 Irving 

18. Brooks' Addresses 

10. Browning's Poems Browning 

24. Ohilde Harold's Pilgrimage 

... Byron 

25. Child's History of England 
Dickens 

26. Cranford Gaskell 

27. Crovn of Wild Olives. Buskin 

?0. Daily Food for Christians 

Ci. Departmental Dittica.... Kipling 

82. Dolly Dialogues Hope 

33. Dream Life Mitchell 

C4. Drammond'e Addresses 

Drummond 

37. Emerson's Essays, Vol. 1 
Emerson 

38. Emerson's Essays, Vol. 2 
Emerson 

39. Ethics or the Dust Ruskin 

40. rivangeline ..Longfellow 

43. Flower Fables Alcott 

46. Gold Dust.., = Yonge 

49. Heroes and Hero Worship, Oarlyle 

50. Hiawatha Longfellow 

51. House of Seven Gables 

Hawthorne 

62. House of the Wolf V/eyman 

67. Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow 
Jerome 

68. Idylls of the King Tennyson 

69. Imitatton of Christ 
Thos. a'Kempis 

60. In Memoriam Tennyson 

64. John Halifax Mulock 

67. Kept for the Master's Use 

Havergal 

68. Kidnapped Stevenson 

69. King of the G^jlden River.. Ruskin 

73. Laddie 

74. Lady of the Lake Scott 

75. Lalla Rookh Moore 

76. Let Ds Follow Him.. .Sienkiewicz 

77. Light of Asia Arnold 



78. Light That Failed. .. .Kipling 

79. Locksley Hall Tennyson 

80. Longfellow's Poems 

Longfellow 

81. Lorna Doone Blackmore 

82. Lowell's Poems Lowell 

83. Lucile Meredith 

88. Marmion Scott 

89. Mosses from an Old Manse 

Hawthorne 

93. Natural Law in the Spiritual 

World Drummond 

94. Now or Never Optic 

97. Paradise Lost Milton 

98. Paul and Virginia 

Saint Pierre 

99. Pilgrim's Progress Bunyan 

100. Plain Tales from the Hills 

Kipling 

101. Pleasures of Life Lubbock 

102. Prince of tho House of David 

Ingraham 

103. Princess Tennyson 

104. Prueand I Curtis 

107. Queen of the Air Ruskin 

110. Rab and His Friends. . . Brown 

111. Representativo Men.. Emerson 

112. Reveries of a Bachelor 

Mitchell 

113. Rollo in Geneva Abbott 

114. Rollo in Holland Abbott 

115. Rollo in London Abbott 

116. Rollo in Naples Abbott 

117. Rollo in Paris Abbott 

118. Rollo in Rome Abbott 

119. Rollo in Scotland Abbott 

120. Rollo in Switzerland... Abbott 

121. RoUoon the Atlantic. .Abbott 

122. Rollo on the Rhine Abbott 

123. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam 

Fitzgerald 

128. Sartor Resartus Carlyle 

129. Scarlet Letter Hawthorne 

130 Sesame and Lilies Ruskin 

131. Sign of the Four Doyle 

132. Sketch Book Irving 

133. Stickit Minister Crockett 

140. Tales from Shakespeare 

...C. and Mary Lamb 

141. Tanglewood Tales.. Hawthorne 

142. True and Beautiful Ruskin 

143. Three Men in a Boat. .Jerome 

144. Through the Looking Glass 

Carroll 

145. Treasure Island Stevenson 

146. Twice Told Tales. .Hawthorne 

150. Uncle Tom's Cabin Stowe 

154. Vicar of Wakefield. .Goldsmith 

158. Whittier's Poems Whittier 

159. Wide, Wide World ....Warner 

160. Window in Thrums Barrie 

161. Wonder Book Hawthorne 



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